Mother's Day
by Kaen Okami
Summary: Whether they are a source of love and strength to be treasured, a mere memory difficult or impossible to recover, or a nightmare only to be forgotten, everyone has some sort of bond to their mother. Oneshot series.
1. Black Star and Swift Star

**A/N -** **This is going to be a series of separate oneshots focused on each character's relationship to their mother, and thankfully I was able to get at least one done to post on Mother's Day.**

 **I think we should kick this off by giving Lady Star a moment in the spotlight, because in this whole archive, I have seen literally only three fics that even feature Black Star's mother, and I thought she should get some focus.**

 **~0~**

 _"I made a promise to revenge his soul in time_

 _I'll make them bleed down at my feet_

 _I held you tight to me, you slipped away_

 _You promised to return to me, and I believed."_

\- _The Promise,_ Within Temptation

~0~

He was late.

Leaning with crossed arms on the narrow sill of the tiny front window, she stared out through the clear glass at the pine forest stretching out between the mountains. Nothing moved save for the branches in the breeze, the sun sank ever lower in the darkening sky, and Swift Star felt an unpleasant twist in her gut. _Stay in the cabin until we come home,_ was what he'd asked of her with one foot out the door. _This hunt won't take long; we'll return by sunset at the very latest. I'll bring you back some souls. I know Black Star will be safe with you._

White Star was late.

He had never left his lover wondering like this before, and she pushed back image after unwanted image of why he had not come back to her alongside their clanmates. Swift Star prided herself on being a level-headed and logical woman, and the clan had reached the general consensus that she was the most intelligent among them. Her name had not been given only for her rapidly moving body and not her equally quick mind, at any rate. As such, she was not one to jump to conclusions, and until she knew for certain that something had stopped White Star and the rest of the clan from ever coming home, she would continue to believe that this particular group of souls had taken longer to claim than usual and that they would be home just a little bit later than they'd promised. Annoying, yes, but as the saying went, better late than never. As long as she got to see them again, it didn't matter. And she _would_ see them again.

A soft, somewhat drowsy whine from behind her reached her ears and made her turn. Knowing that without her immediate attention the whining would soon become crying, Swift Star left her post at the window and walked into the cabin's other room. As soon as he saw his mother enter, Black Star calmed down and started babbling happily, reaching through the bars of his crib at her.

"Hello, little one," Swift Star cooed fondly. "How's my boy?"

"Mama!" Black Star chirped, and she smiled. Thus far that was the only word the one-year-old had said, and his first utterance of it a couple weeks ago had cost the half of the clan who'd bet that he'd say 'daddy' first fifty dollars each. (White Star hadn't been bothered by it: he had been laughing at and teasing their unfortunate clanmates as he collected his winnings). He kept reaching eagerly up to her. "Mama, Mama..."

"All right, come here, you," she said, lifting her son into her arms. "Daddy's going to be home soon. Can you say that? 'Daddy?'"

"Mama!"

"Mm, next time, perhaps. Come on, we can wait for him together." Swift Star walked back into the other room and sat down on the faded red armchair by the window, settling Black Star on her lap. "Daddy's going to be happy to see us. I don't think your big brothers and sisters are going to take all that much interest in you until you're old enough to start combat training, except to make bets on what weapon you'll be best with or which parent you'll take after more. As if we've got nothing better to do with our money than gamble. But I know your father cares about you more than that. You know, he'd never say it in front of our clanmates or they'd mock him to hell and back, but he told me that we're the best people he has in his life. And I know that must be true: the eight of us are one clan, but you and your father and I are the only ones that are really family."

Black Star, busy pawing at his mother's long blue hair, was happily oblivious to everything she was saying. Swift Star didn't mind: he couldn't understand her words just yet, but she knew he liked the sound of her voice. "So maybe it's me that you like best, is that right, little one?" she asked playfully, running her fingers gently down his cheek. He giggled, and she went on. "It's you that Daddy and I like best. I bet you'll grow up to be strong like both of us."

White Star technically was not a family man. He didn't much care to interact with people in general, and preferred to leave most of their son's care in his partner's hands. (She didn't have a problem with that; she was worlds better at it anyway, and she would make sure that he knew that since she took more responsibility for their child she had more authority over him by right). Even so, there was pride in his eyes and an appreciative smile on his face when he looked at his child, and she knew that he was always imagining Black Star growing up to become just as powerful a warrior as the two of them were. His greatest desire was to attain godlike power through human souls, but having a son in his own image, that could equal him, came in at a close second. This did not worry her either: since the day they had met as young, ambitious teenagers with dreams of power won by the sword, she had been the ice, calm and coldly rational, that tempered the fire in White Star's heart and kept it from burning out of control. If necessary, she was perfectly capable of doing that for her son as well.

"At least until you get older and meet a nice girl," she thought out loud. "Or boy. Or anyone, really, that can be at your side when you're too old to need your mother looking after you all the time."

With that thought, Swift Star wondered if Black Star would ever experience anything like his parents had when they fell for each other, back when there had been no White Star or Swift Star, only Mashiro and Shizuma.

~0~

" _He is a prodigy," the village says of Mashiro, when at twelve years old he enters and excels at the Hoshi family business, when at thirteen he collects higher bounties than hunters twice his age, when at seventeen he challenges his father and three older brothers for the position of clan head, and barely twenty minutes later four corpses drop to the dojo floor and for the first time in generations the youngest child leads the Hoshi family and their home village. "He is destined for power."_

" _She is exceptional," they say of Shizuma, when she learns martial arts forms as easily as she breathes, when she masters the sword at age eight, when she becomes one of the few outsiders chosen to be trained in the Hoshi family's style and to have a chance at joining their ranks, when in their final test all the others fall to Hoshi Mashiro's blade while she is able to fight the young champion to a draw. "She is destined for greatness."_

 _She thinks that that moment is when Mashiro first started to love her. She would never forget the astonishment on his face when he realized that even though she couldn't defeat him, there was no way he could defeat her either. Ever since that fight, he had made a point of seeking her out often, and they had started spending time together daily. With each day that had gone by, she decides, looking back, she had loved him a little bit more._

 _They never fight to seriously harm each other again, but they spar often, knowing that there's no one else that can give them a proper challenge. This evening they are alone on the back courtyard, and the only sounds are the hum of insects in the grass and the clash of their blades meeting again and again. Usually Mashiro likes to talk during their fights, but tonight he is as quiet as she is, deep in thought even as he fends her off._

" _Hey," she breaks the silence, parrying another blow. "This isn't like you. What's on your mind?"_

 _He hesitates a moment, then replies, "Shizuma, do you ever feel like there could be more for us than this? Like there's more we can do and further we can go?"_

" _Is this a proposal?" she asks, raising her eyebrows._

 _He smirks. "Not just yet. I mean more as in our position. Our power. Don't you think that this just isn't enough?"_

" _What do you mean, not enough? You're the strongest person in the village. You fought to become head of the family and won. You practically rule everyone here. What more can you want?" she points out, puzzled._

" _I killed my lord father and my brothers because I thought surpassing them and becoming leader would satisfy me," Mashiro says. "It proved that I am stronger than they were, but after two years the novelty has worn off. Managing this backwater village that means nothing to anyone outside it, controlling the bounty hunters from behind the scenes...I wasn't born for this. I need more power. I need to be stronger, better. Do you understand?"_

" _What exactly did you have in mind?" Shizuma asks, mentally reviewing the situation. Mashiro practically lives for battle, for the rush of victory, and he has seen less and less of the things he craves most over the past two years. She is content, for the most part, but she is the one who gets to carry out missions and bring in bounties, as only a soldier under his command. He must be restless._

" _I'm tired of this place. I'm tired of all but a handful of these people. Why don't we just leave the Hoshi family? Just put one of my nephews in power, take our strongest friends, and go out on our own? We wouldn't have to waste our abilities merely catching weak people. We could move up from this, become_ real _hunters."_

" _...You mean assassins."_

" _I do. Killing an opponent proves your power so much more completely, I've found, and it pays better to boot. But I don't think even that's quite enough to satisfy me."_

" _Then why bring it up? What else are you planning?"_

 _His smirk broadens, turning his expression into something vicious and thrilling. "Training and battle are one way to power. But have you ever thought about what it would be like to claim a fallen target's soul?"_

 _Shizuma's breath catches and her eyes widen at the idea, and Mashiro strikes again, turning his ninjato and holding them in a blade lock. Especially since her katana is so much bigger, it's a stupid move in the practical sense: your opponent could easily slide their own blade down and slice off a couple fingers, or go in low and knock you off your feet. But Mashiro trusts Shizuma not to do that, and anyway he's not trying to beat her with the move. He leans closer to her, so their faces are mere inches away. "We could transform ourselves into beings greater than humans. Something like gods. No one could ever be stronger than us. Isn't that something you'd want?"_

 _Shizuma takes a moment to consider the idea. Her entire life in this village, with the Hoshi family, has been a perpetual contest of strength, a battle to stay on top in a world of other warriors just as hungry for power as she. To live is to fight and to win, to keep winning no matter what else you do. What Mashiro has in mind would essentially be achieving a warrior's ultimate goal: gaining superior power no matter the cost._

 _Mashiro withdraws his sword, and steps back to give her space. Shizuma looks her lover up and down: nineteen years old and gives the impression of being much older from his experience, a head taller than her, tan-skinned and well-muscled, his white hair carefully combed into spikes above his angular face. He carries himself like a royal, and he practically exudes power and confidence. This is a person, she thinks, that any self-respecting warrior would want to follow._

" _Takano Shizuma..." he says, his smirk turning to a self-assured smile. "I want you to be by my side." One corner of his mouth is still curved up as he looks at her with knowing eyes, as if he has no doubt that she will agree. And he should not doubt. Their places have been beside each other since the day they met._

" _Then that's where I'll stay, if you keep your word. Make us powerful, Mashiro."_

 _And as she had hoped, the warrior's word is good. Only a couple weeks after that conversation, she and Mashiro have convinced five of their comrades to leave the village (with the eldest of Mashiro's brothers' surviving children hastily shoved into his abandoned position as leader) and follow the way of the assassin with them. They shed their family names and take on new ones representative of the new division of the clan they have created: White Star, Swift Star, Silver Star, Morning Star, Evening Star, Lucky Star (all of them laugh at Kichirou for that choice, but he insists), and Shooting Star._

 _Over the next ten years, everything happens as White Star predicted. They kill whoever they're hired to, amassing wealth and collecting precious souls, reveling in the abilities these souls give them. They lust after blood and victory and power, power,_ power, _that will ensure that they will never be defeated._

 _For Swift Star, their constant pursuit of these things comes to mean more than just winning, which, although it unfailingly send a rush of euphoria through her ever-strengthening soul each time, has become more of a secondary goal in her life. The clan has become her whole life, White Star and their clanmates the only people who matter to her. It is no longer for herself, but for them that she fights, kills, and consumes soul after soul to increase her power. The stronger she is, she reasons, the better suited she is to protect them all, and make defeat an absolute impossibility._

~0~

"And now to protect you," she said softly to Black Star, looking intently into her son's face.

His hair was like hers, but those bright green eyes were all White Star's. She moved her fingers from his cheek to his right arm, tracing the outline of the star tattoo on his shoulder that marks him as theirs. She would rather have had it done when he was much older (she had nearly decapitated Morning Star and Evening Star when she'd returned from a solo mission to find that the twins had done it themselves while she was gone, knowing she would object, and had had to be physically held down by White Star while the two fled), but, well, it wouldn't be worth the pain and extra effort to remove it now.

She was adamant, however, that he not begin to consume souls for his own transformation until he was much older. To learn how to fight and kill early on would be a necessity for the life they live, but none of them knew whether souls would have a different, possibly not quite as positive, effect on someone who is not fully developed yet, even if that someone was born of two Kishin eggs. White Star didn't quite seem to understand her concerns, but still supported her, and was content to wait patiently until the day that the two of them could take their son on his first true soul hunt. (Not that he wouldn't jump at the chance if she were to suddenly change her mind, however, she thought wryly.)

"We're going to make you strong, little one," she said again. "Just like Mama and Daddy."

Swift Star lifted her head and looked out the window again, at the sky darkening deeper and deeper blue as the sun set fully. Her clanmates really were starting to worry her now...

Right then she spotted movement on one of the nearby mountain paths, and immediately got to her feet, shifting Black Star to her hip as she darted to the window. _White Star! Wait...No, that's not..._

It only took a second of looking for her to be sure that that person was not White Star, or any of her clanmates. _Who, then?_ Hoping that it was just a wayward hiker who wandered into the vicinity of their temporary home (easily taken care of), she reached with her free hand for the binoculars lying on the end table and focused in on them. Her blood ran cold when she recognized the person approaching them: a young man with cornrowed hair and tattoos of kanji on his arms, holding a combat knife in his hand. The name escaped her, but she had never forgotten this man's face since first seeing him. He had been one of the soldiers sent after them in Shibusen's most recent attempt to eliminate them, and she had been the one who slammed him out of the way before he could stick that knife in Shooting Star's throat.

And most likely, he was the one who had...who had...

"No," she said out loud, coldly and firmly, because she refused to jump to the conclusion that Shibusen has finally bested her clan. Not after all they've done to make themselves invincible. They wouldn't leave her and Black Star alone. "No, there is no way they're gone." She glanced at the child in her arms, who looked back up at his mother with wide, innocent eyes. Her own life meant nothing in comparison to his. "And even if they are, Shibusen won't get you too."

Swift Star turned on her heel and carried her son back into the other room, sitting him gently down in his crib. "I don't like to leave you here," she whispered to him. "But Mama just needs to go take care of one thing, and she'll be back soon."

With that, she tightened the straps holding her katana to her back and slipped out of the cabin, moving as quickly and silently as a mountain lion through the forested slopes. The souls she eats have made her faster and more agile than she could ever have been as a full human, so it was not long before she heard the heavy footsteps of the meister - Sid Barrett, _that's_ his name, she remembered - nearby, and immediately she darted up into the nearest tree, climbing until she was completely obscured by the leaves and the shadows and could still keep a good vantage point. Judging from his position, he would be coming relatively close to her.

 _Rule of assassination number one: Blend into the darkness. Control your breathing. And wait for your target to let his guard down._

Slowly, she drew her katana out of its sheath, and waited a minute for Barrett to get close. As she predicted, he started to pass by her tree, right under her branch. She could see tension in his muscles, and she watched his eyes flick from one tree to another, knowing that she could be hiding behind any of them. As if she would be so amateurish. He was cautious, but not cautious enough. A pity he wouldn't think to look _up._

 _Rule of assassination number three: Strike your target before he notices you._

As Barrett passed directly beneath her, Swift Star pounced, swinging her blade directly at the meister's bare neck. However, this was not to be as simple a kill as she had thought: his reflexes were better than she had given him credit for, and he whipped around and knocked away her sword with his knife, leaping back out of range of the long blade. Both of them, wary of attacking again straightaway, assumed defensive stances. Barrett smirked, and said, "You thought that'd be real easy, didn't you...Swift Star, is it?"

"I had hoped so, yes," she replied, eyes narrowing. "Now, where is the rest of my clan? I was expecting them back by now, you see, and I'm rather annoyed that they've kept me waiting this long."

"Someone as smart as you should have guessed by now. The Star Clan is finished; all that's left of it is you."

She refused to let any emotion show on her face, nor to let her hands shake, but she felt as if something has been suddenly and violently torn out of her, leaving only a ragged scrap of what she is. White Star...Her clanmates...Every single one of them... _Dead?_ She couldn't deny it any longer, but it seemed that it couldn't possibly be true. She had just seen them, been with them, only a few hours ago! How could they be gone now?

"Though I probably shouldn't say that you're _all_ that's left of the clan," Barrett was going on. "Don't think that we didn't notice White Star's right hand lady suddenly not joining in any of the attacks for nine months a year ago, and that even after you started showing up again at least you stayed behind more often than not. It doesn't take an idiot to figure out what that could mean." He was watching her carefully for any reaction, any sign at all that he was right. Well, she wasn't giving him any. "You're protecting White Star's child, aren't you?"

This damned meister daring to talk about her son had snapped Swift Star right back into focus, and white-hot fury was roiling in her gut in place of shock. _Calm. Cold. Controlled,_ she reminded herself. _I_ am _protecting my child._ With that thought spurring her on, she charged at Barrett - no way was she going to let him finish what he'd started. As they clashed, over and over, she had to admit she was surprised and rather impressed at his ability to keep up with her. Most of the people she targeted were dropped to the ground with their throats or chests slashed open and souls stolen before they even realized she was there. _Then again, this is likely the man who killed White Star,_ she reminded herself bitterly. _Who knows if you'll be able to best him?_ Their fight went on for a minute more, neither warrior able to lay more than a scratch on the other, before Barrett dodged again and then suddenly dropped out of sight.

Startled and confused, Swift Star looked down to see a hole at her feet where the meister had been. No, not just a hole, she realized - a tunnel of some sort. Leading, she saw as she looked closer, right up the slope and towards the cabin. A stab of terror ran through her, and she bolted straight back up, faster than she had ever moved in her life. The thought occurred to her that Barrett could be bluffing, knowing that the mother wouldn't stray far from her baby and hoping that she would lead him to him. But it didn't matter whether he was or not: Shibusen would not let the remnants of the Star Clan live, so anything was better than taking the chance that a meister and weapon team could be alone with her son for even a moment.

She was at the cabin in moments that felt far too long to her, just in time to see the door close. _No!_

Putting on an extra burst of speed, Swift Star rushed up to the door, leapt forward and kicked the thing off its hinges, and swung hard. Both the door and her sword just barely missed Barrett, and the crash elicited a loud, frightened wail from the child in the other room. "Well, if I didn't know your kid was here before, I sure do now," Barrett remarked as he moved back away from the doorway and the furious assassin positioning herself between him and her son, and his weapon snapped at him not to make her any angrier.

Too late. A red haze was filling Swift Star's vision, and she gripped her katana tighter to resist the impulse to drop it and tear her opponent apart with her bare hands. "Who cares?" she snarled, her rage mounting, growing stronger than her prized discipline and self-control. "You took White Star. You took my clan. You won't take my son too!"

She darted forward again, more determined than ever to destroy this man. The sooner he died, the sooner she would be able to take Black Star and get the hell out of here, to somewhere Shibusen would never find them. As she bore down on Barrett (it was a testament to his skill as a meister that he could keep fending her off with only a knife the size of his hand), she caught split-second glimpses of herself in his eyes. Her own eyes were stretched wide and fiery, and the bright golden mark of the Star Clan burned over the gray irises. Her katana was moving so fiercely and wildly that it was a blur in the air, and her sharpening teeth were bared like an angry wolf's. The sight almost made her laugh: she had been slowly turning herself into a Kishin for years, but this was only one of a few times that she truly looked a demon.

 _Coldly rational's gone straight out the window, then, has it?_ snickered a little voice at the back of her mind.

 _Perhaps,_ she answered herself, _but rationality has no power in the face of a parent's protective instinct._

Since childhood, victory had always been both a necessity and a certainty in Swift Star's life. Over time she had just come to expect to win, especially as her power grew, and battles became less and less of a challenge and the possibility that she could lose shrunk lower and lower. So when she swung ferociously once more, for what she meant to be the final time, what happened was not at all what she had anticipated. Before her katana could reach his throat, Barrett ducked and went in low, leaving her no time to block or evade him before he buried his knife into her stomach and slashed upward, to her sternum. A cry of shock had barely left her mouth before he slammed a solid uppercut into her jaw with his other hand, and then a kick into her gut that sent her sprawling on the floor, her sword falling with a clatter.

She tried to scramble back to her feet - she must have suffered worse than this before, she told herself firmly, she had to _move_ \- but Barrett was fast. He kicked her sword away and brought his boot down hard on her knee, snapping the bone. Swift Star cried out again, still struggling to get back up, but adrenaline and fury were not enough to carry her through this time. The pain burned through her whole body, forcing her back down into the rapidly expanding pool of her blood, immobilizing her.

"Sid? Are you going to finish her?"

"She's already done. You can transform back."

Though Swift Star's body was weakening and her vision was starting to go fuzzy, she could still summon the strength to lift her head, but she could not do any more than that as she watched the weapon walking into the next room, towards her still-howling son. A wordless shriek of horror escaped her, and she tried unsuccessfully to lunge forward, barely moving an inch even as her heart seemed to be pounding at a hundred miles an hour. Before she could do anything else, Barrett was kneeling next to her, obscuring her vision.

"Easy, easy," he murmured, as if calming a wounded animal. "It's okay, we're not going to hurt him. Not at all."

"Wh...What?" she heard herself saying.

"Nygus and I aren't going to kill an innocent little kid for the sins of his parents," Barrett explained. "That's not the kind of people we are."

As she processed her words, her terror lessened, but her confusion remained. "If...If not...Then what?"

"We won't abandon him. We'll take care of him ourselves. You don't need to worry about him, Swift Star."

She stared incredulously at the meister, still trying to get this through her head, which was growing steadily lighter and hazier. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye, and with considerable effort she twisted around to look, Barrett moving out of her way. The weapon had rejoined them, cradling Black Star in her arms and talking soothingly to the baby. "Shh, shh, little one. It's all right, it's all right..."

 _He likes to be called that,_ Swift Star thought. _He likes to be held that way._ The assassin knew better than to think that she was going to be leaving this place alive. White was creeping in at the edges of her vision, and it was agony to even keep breathing now. But, she was vaguely surprised to realize, that didn't bother her as much as it had before. Her life was over, but her son would survive. And that was all that really mattered to her any more. Even so, there was still one final thing she needed to do.

"H-Hey..." she whispered, trying to focus on the weapon, to move her right hand and motion to herself. "H...Here...P-Please..." The weapon looked from her, to Black Star, and back to her, then stepped forward and knelt on the floor beside Swift Star, adjusting her hold on the child so his mother could see him better.

"Black...Star..." she breathed, reaching shakily up to lay gentle, bloodied fingertips on her son's cheek. He was too young to realize what was happening, she knew, and too young to remember any of it either. He wouldn't remember anything of her or White Star or their clan. Not how his mother had loved him more than anyone else, how she had died trying to protect him. He would grow up hating her. But as long as he got to grow up at all, that was all right. If she had to die now, then at least she would die looking at her sweet, precious child, and saying what she wanted the most for him now.

"Be...st-stronger...than...us..."

She could feel herself slipping, and then all of a sudden whiteness filled her vision completely. There were the odd sensations of falling, and of weightlessness. A memory floated into her mind: White Star, his sword streaked red and a satisfied grin lighting his face after they had won their first souls. It was the first time she could remember that he had looked at her and she had seen pure affection and pride in his eyes.

 _Swift Star...I'm glad you were by my side._

She felt a smile start to curve her lips, even as oblivion claimed her. _I'm glad too._

~0~

Almost the instant the last word was out of her mouth, with one last ragged breath Swift Star went limp, dropping back down to the floor with a thump. Her soul, red and swollen with dozens of stolen others, materialized and floated above her chest. "Ah...Nygus?" Sid asked hesitantly, gesturing to it. "Do you want to...?"

"Eat her soul while I'm holding her kid?" Nygus finished, raising an eyebrow at him as she wiped the traces of Swift Star's blood from her son's face. "That's just a little too messed up, don't you think?"

"I suppose so. Later, then." Sid bent down, took the soul and slipped it into one of his jacket pockets. He turned his full attention to the baby in his weapon's arms, looking at him with interest, then glanced back down at the fallen assassin. This wasn't the place to stand around talking; he gestured to Nygus to follow him and they walked out of the cabin, starting back to where their teammates were waiting. "She said his name was Black Star, right?"

"Yeah. You really meant what you said about us taking care of him from now on."

It wasn't a question. "I did. Not to rope you into it or anything, though...If you don't want - "

"None of that, Sid," Nygus cut him off, smiling. "I'm your partner, I'm in this as much as you are. Besides, I'm not entirely sure you can handle this without help."

"Hey!" Sid protested, but he was smiling too. "Thanks for the vote of confidence!"

"Well, it's not exactly going to be easy. But I think we can handle it together, so long as we have help." The smile started to fade from her face. "My main concern is how everyone's going to handle this. Do you really think they'll let us take him? Our mission was to eliminate the entire Star Clan."

"There's no way Shinigami-sama could tell us to kill him too; he's still so young. And we can't just throw away the opportunity to raise him right, away from the influence of his clan."

"Exactly." Nygus gave Black Star's single tuft of blue hair a gentle stroke, and he giggled. He didn't seem to mind being handled by strangers as much as a kid his age probably ought to, Sid observed; in fact, it seemed like he enjoyed the attention. "He deserves that chance, at least. We can raise him right, can't we?"

"Yeah..." Sid grinned at the smiling little boy looking interestedly back and forth between them. "Yeah, I bet we can."

~0~

 _Eleven years later..._

For once, Black Star's expression was flat, his eyes contemplative. "So that's how it happened, then?"

"That's how it happened." Personally, Sid was surprised it took this long for him to ask that particular question. He'd known for a long time that his clan was dead, why they had been killed, and that his adoptive parents had been the ones that killed his biological ones. But it was only now that Black Star had approached him and asked, uncharacteristically hesitant, what exactly he and Nygus had done that day, and what his birth parents had been like. "Do you feel any differently about them, Black Star? Or about us? It's okay if you do, you know."

A moment of silence passed, and then Black Star shook his head. "Nah. My old man and old lady had it coming, for killing all those people. And if they were as strong as you say they were, then you and Nygus are even more awesome for being able to kick both their asses, right?" he added, smirking.

"I guess you could say that." Sid couldn't resist a small smile of his own. "You know, Nygus really liked the Mother's Day present you got her. Though I have no idea where you managed to find a bouquet of pink carnations that freaking _huge."_

Black Star stands up, his familiar overconfidence returning. "Of course I found some. A big man like me has got to be the one to give the best and biggest gifts! Okay, I'm going to get back to training now. Can't slack off, after all." He paused, then said, "Hey, Sid...Thanks for telling me all that. I'm glad I heard it from you."

"No problem."

Usually before beginning training, Black Star would go up to the rack of practice weapons and take a few minutes to consider all of them, deciding which to train with today (because "The great me can't limit himself to just _one_ weapon, especially now that I've got Tsubaki as my partner!"). But it didn't take too long today. Sid watched as he reached for a ninjato, then thought better of it and retracted his hand, perhaps picturing that same weapon in his father's hand. Instead he took a katana and, not going back on this choice, stepped into the empty court and began going over his favorite forms.

Sid found it interesting and fairly reassuring to know that, at least for today, he was favoring his mother's weapon of choice. While he tried as best he could not to connect Black Star, who was undeniably his own man, to his long-gone family, sometimes the boy bore an uncanny resemblance to boasting, power-hungry White Star, who Sid had been more than happy to finish off. But now, watching his adoptive son wield the sword as smoothly and easily as he would use an extra limb, with an unusually thoughtful and serious look in his eyes, Sid thought he could see something of what Swift Star must once have been. She had seemed the most human of the pre-Kishin clan, after all.

Sid thought that if she could see Black Star now, she would be happy to see him rising above the sins of his clan. It looked as if her son was fulfilling his mother's last request to him after all.

 **~0~**


	2. Maka and Kamiko

**A/N - Just a heads-up since she's the topic of much debate in this fandom: my personal headcanons about Kami feature heavily in this one.**

 **~0~**

 _"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby."_

\- Langston Hughes

~0~

Kamiko Albarn could sleep through the thunder no matter how loudly it rumbled, but the tiny, frightened cry underneath it woke her instantly: "Mama! _Mama!"_

The sound made her maternal instincts kick in hard, and she was throwing off her covers and darting down the hallway to her daughter's room within a moment of hearing it. She pushed open the door, asking into the darkness, "Maka? Sweetie, it's Mama. Are you okay?"

There was no answer, save for the whimpering coming from the slightly shaking lump of blankets piled at the foot of the bed. Kami quietly crossed the room and sat beside it, the mattress faintly creaking under her weight. "Maka?" she asked, reaching out to lay a hand on the pile. As soon as her fingers made contact, blankets flew everywhere as its occupant burst out, and Kami found herself with her arms full of frightened six-year-old. "Maka! Easy now, what's the matter, sweetie?" she soothed, holding her daughter closer to her.

"I-I don't like the storm!" the little girl cried, curling up in her mother's lap. "It's really scary!"

"Oh, Maka," Kami crooned. "Don't worry, it's not that bad - "

The word was barely out of her mouth before another enormous peal of thunder boomed, and Kami could have sworn she felt the house shudder. Maka cried out again and buried her face into her mother's shoulder. The more sardonic part of the meister's mind commented on the irony: _Look at you, the storm witch with a daughter who's scared stiff of thunder and lightning, the same things you crave and adore. I wonder what she would think of_ you _if she knew the truth?_

 _Shut it, you,_ Kami told that voice firmly, and turned her full attention back to Maka. "All right, maybe it is that bad," Kami conceded, and started to stroke her hair. "But there's no need to be scared, I'm right here."

Maka was unconvinced. "Wh-where's Papa?"

"Papa's not home yet, baby," Kami told her. "He called and said his plane got delayed because of the storm, he won't be home until tomorrow."

"You said he'd be home when I woke up," Maka reminded her, tears welling up in her wide green eyes.

"I know, sweetie, I know. I didn't think you'd wake up this early...Or late..." _What time is it, anyway?_ Kami glanced over at the glow in the dark clock on the nightstand. _All right: three in the morning, I've got a terrified Maka on my hands, and Spirit's halfway across the damn country on Death Scythe business. No problem; I can handle this._ "Do you think you can go back to sleep?" she asked, knowing the answer already.

Maka shook her head. "Uh-uh," she mumbled into Kami's shirt.

 _Yep, didn't think so._ "Maybe Mama can help you with that? If you can get back to sleep, the storm won't bother you any more."

Realizing what Kami had in mind, Maka perked up, momentarily forgetting her fears. "Are you gonna sing the storm song? Sing the storm song!"

Kami laughed lightly at her daughter's sudden enthusiasm. "All right, you little cutie, if you really want me to! Here..." She took a breath, rested her daughter's head back against her shoulder, and started to sing. " _Little child, be not afraid; the rain pounds harsh against the glass, like an unwanted stranger; there is no danger, I am here tonight..."_

She remembered hearing this song somewhere or other while she was still pregnant, and instantly falling in love with it. Since then, it had become her go-to lullaby, and her daughter liked it as much as she did. Despite the fact that huge forks of lightning were still clearly visible raking the cobalt sky outside, Maka near-immediately relaxed in her mother's arms. Kami would be lying if she said it didn't make her absolutely melt inside. " _Little child, be not afraid; though thunder explode and lightning flash, illuminates your tearstained face, I am here tonight...And someday you'll know, that nature is so; this same rain that draws you near me falls on rivers and land, and forests and sand; makes the beautiful world that you see, in the morning..."_

Someday she may tell Maka the truth, release the Soul Protect she'd placed on her at the moment of birth and finally tell her about her true heritage. She'll _have_ to, if she ends up not physically aging past her twenties or thirties, though Kami had no idea whether that would happen or not. Whether a half-breed took more after their mother or father, concerning abilities and aging and such, was generally a crapshoot in every case, from what she'd heard from other witches before she'd come to Shibusen. It was nothing short of amazing that she'd inherited and managed to pass on her father's meister capabilities at all.

The preferable outcome would be that she never had to tell Maka anything. She'd made the choice to renounce the witch world and swear herself completely to Shibusen long ago, and more recently had made the choice to let her daughter take her place in the purer, more righteous world without the burden of having a foot in both. She might be able to spare her that pain, at least, and let her face the world free of fear or indecision.

(And maybe, just maybe, there would come a day that Maka would be ready to know the truth, and accept her heritage as both meister and witch without hating herself for either side, as Kami was still learning to do. But she knew that that was a hope too slim to bother hanging on to.)

" _Little child, be not afraid; the storm clouds mask your beloved moon, and its candlelight beams still keep pleasant dreams; and I am here tonight...Little child, be not afraid; the wind makes creatures of our trees, and the branches to hands; they're not real, understand, and I am here tonight..."_

Kami wrapped her arms tighter around her daughter, who was now drifting quietly between wakefulness and sleep, her eyelids drooping. Logically, she knew she couldn't shield Maka from everything. Sooner than she would like, her already ambitious girl would be charging headlong into her own battles, making a name for herself beyond being only the daughter of a Death Scythe and legendary meister, probably becoming a legend in her own right (if her parents' own proud imaginings proved true). Soon she wouldn't need her mother's protective arms around her any longer, and the thought simultaneously pleased and saddened Kami. But while she was still able, she would take care of Maka as best she could. She would soothe her fears tonight, and teach her later on to muster up the courage to overcome them. That, to her, was the integral lesson that every person had to learn to successfully get through life, and that every meister or weapon had to learn to truly become a great warrior.

" _And someday you'll know, that nature is so; this same rain that draws you near me falls on rivers and land, and forests and sand; makes the beautiful world that you see, in the morning..."_

If nothing else, she could be absolutely certain that Maka would go on to have a better life than she had had. She already had a friend and borderline brother in Black Star, and an outgoing and friendly girl like her would have no trouble making other friends later on. Her mother loved her with all her heart, and her father (questionable fidelity aside) doted on her like she was the eighth wonder of the world. Her place in Shibusen, should she still wish to attend when she got older, was set as long as she was willing to work at it, and even then it would not be the half as much of the trial it had been for Kami. Maka would never feel the sort of confusion and loneliness that she had had as a young girl, feeling so out of place it sickened her, feeling as if she was horribly betraying those she loved most by even being near them, before they had all known what she really was. It still made her shudder to remember the constant stomach-sinking terror she had lived with, believing that no matter how hard she trained or how many pre-Kishin she slayed in Shinigami's service, the second she let her true nature slip she would be killed on the spot for being such an unnatural creature.

She ran her fingers through Maka's loose hair as her voice dropped lower and softer. " _For you know...Once even I was a little child...And I was afraid..."_

A small, contented smile curved her lips. That fear reached a peak after she'd accidentally outed herself (no matter how foolish it had been to do it and no matter what had happened afterward, she would never have regretted punching that bastard Stein with lightning for what he did to Spirit, no, not in a million years, especially since cutting a scar across that smug face had been so satisfying), and had had to confess before Shinigami-sama that she was, in fact, a witch with the abilities of a meister. The words had been even harder to force out with Spirit, Stein, Marie, Azusa, Sid, and Nygus watching. Prostrating herself before the god she served, pressing her forehead against the cold floor of the Death Room, praying for understanding and forgiveness but fully expecting a blade to cleave through her exposed neck at any second, she had been completely shocked when she had gotten exactly what she had longed for, from every single one of them. That fear had been nothing, compared to the overwhelming joy that had come then.

" _But a gentle someone always came..."_

Her friends' acceptance had been amazing enough to her. But until the day she died, Kami would never forget the pure fire in Spirit's eyes as he promised her that it didn't matter what she was: as her boyfriend and her new weapon, he would love her and protect her no matter what. And in the many missions they'd carried out in the years afterward, he'd saved her life just as often as she had saved his, so he had made good on his word there. That was the day, she had been able to tell in hindsight, that she had first realized how much her partner loved her, and how much she loved him. (Lately, she had noticed, he had started to slip back into his old flirtatious ways, like he had acted before they'd started dating. But surely she could head that off: after all, a man who had shown her that sort of loyalty wouldn't turn completely unfaithful for no good reason.)

" _To dry all my tears, trade sweet sleep the fears, and to give a kiss goodnight..."_

The time from that day on had been the best of her life. She and Spirit were married, with the most perfect, precious child they could have hoped for. Her weapon was a Death Scythe, and the hunt in which they had claimed that hundredth soul she would always remember with fierce, bitter pride. (She could never think of that witch as her mother; only a monster that deserved a hundred times worse than anything Kami could have given her). All of her friends had willingly and earnestly sworn to keep her secret safe, and were closer to her now than ever. Azusa, though an ocean away now, still dutifully kept in touch with them with video and phone calls, at least once a week. Marie still adored her (choosing to ignore the enmity between her and Stein, save for the times she and Spirit had to pull the two squabbling meisters apart), and had delightedly thrown herself into her role as Maka's godmother. Sid and Nygus had unexpectedly become parents as well, and barely a day went by when at least two of the four of them didn't talk to or see each other once, relating their latest stories of parenting ups and downs. Shinigami had told her directly that the revelation of her true heritage would not make him doubt her loyalty to him, and that he placed his complete trust in her regardless of it.

And in another stroke of pure good luck, she was still able to have a connection to the witch side of her blood. Though Kami detested the witch world as a whole, there was no reason she could not be proud of the unique and wonderful power it granted her, or keep friends from the small decent part of it. She had known Medusa since before she had ever come to Death City, and she had been ecstatic to be reunited with her after so long, and to find out that she wanted to better understand meisters and weapons by working this close beside them. Apparently years of trying to convince her that coexistence between their kinds was possible had paid off in the end. Of course she would keep her old friend's true identity as a witch a secret ("I know they've accepted you for who you are, Kami-chan, but I'm still a little leery about it. Old habits die hard, you know. You understand if I want to let them know on my own time, don't you? I knew you would."), but still, it was good to have someone who could fully understand both sides of her.

Despite often being called such, Kami had learned long ago that to be perfect was an impossibility, and to strive for that was to chase a shadow. But there had been a time when she had truly believed that even happiness and contentment were beyond her reach. Now, she had more of it than she had ever dared to hope for, and that was more than enough for her.

" _Well, now I am grown, and these years have shown; rain's a part of how life goes, but it's dark and it's late, so I'll hold you and wait, 'til your frightened eyes do close..."_

Before moving on to the final verses, she paused, glancing down to see that Maka had fallen sound asleep in her arms, while her mother had been reminiscing. "Works every time," she whispered to herself, and laid a soft kiss on the top of her daughter's head. "Good night, sweetheart."

Gently, so as not to wake her back up again, Kami laid Maka back down and pulled her blankets back over her, tucking them in snugly around her tiny form. _Mission accomplished,_ she thought happily as she turned and walked out of the room. The storm was passing over quickly, she noted, and the roar of the thunder was growing fainted and more distant. The only noise in the room was the steady pattering of the rain on the roof and windows, and that was undeniably soothing. She could be fairly certain that her daughter would sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.

Naturally, thinking that she and Maka were the only two people in the house, Kami had expected to open the door and walk into an empty hallway, not to step out and collide with her husband. "Oh!" she yelped, stumbling back. "Spirit?!"

"Sorry - did I scare you?" Spirit apologized, trying his best to keep back a small smile at the look on his wife's face. "My plane's delay wasn't as bad as we thought - I would have called you, but my phone died."

Kami, her surprise short-lived, lightly and playfully cuffed his shoulder. "You jerk, don't scare me like that! I almost punched you in the face!" she scolded, trying not to laugh.

"Yeah, sorry. I was going to come in a few minutes ago, but I think you had everything under control, so I just stayed out here and listened. Hey..." He let a bright, winning smile curve his lips. "Did I ever tell you that you've got the most beautiful singing voice anyone ever heard?"

Kami smiled. "You might have, once or twice. Come on," she said, continuing past him down the hall towards their bedroom, gesturing for him to follow. "It's past three in the morning and we really should be getting some sleep."

"Right behind you, my lovely wife!"

~0~

 _Seven years later..._

The driving rain that battered the roof of the Winnebago had made it so Kami couldn't see two feet in front of her, but luckily the wooded area she and her new partner were currently passing through allowed her to pull over and park for the night.

Said new partner had passed out on the couch hours ago, his soft, steady breathing drowned out by the noise of rain on metal. It had been pure chance that she had met him in Athens, having happened to be hunting the same witch that he was, and what a lucky meeting it had been! She could not ask for a more valuable ally than Karasu: as the adoptive son and former familiar of a witch, he had been gifted with transformation magic and her own powerful shadow magic, and though he looked not a year over twenty-five, he had over nine centuries of experience with both battle and the witch world that proved infinitely useful and made her own hundred and fifty years look pitiful by comparison. Though he had accepted her offer of traveling the world with her to assist her on her missions, and had gradually begun to trust the woman he called his new mistress, he had yet to give her more than a passing hint about his past. He spoke highly of his mother, who had impressed upon her son how essential it was that a witch never abuse their power for the sake of pointlessly harming others, which had led to his killing witches that deviated from this rule just as skillfully as a Death Scythe and their weapon would, and to his meeting Kami.

But other than that, nothing. She looked at the faded red burn scars, hidden as often and as much as possible by Karasu's long hair and clothes, that twisted her familiar's face and body ("From my three sweet sisters," was all he had said when she asked, curt and bitter, spitting the last word like a curse, "once they decided I was no longer useful to them."), and part of her thought that she would be better off not knowing. But another, more sensitive part thought that perhaps the more the two of them knew about each other, the better off both of them would be. Perhaps it had been lack of communication that had, at least partially, caused her marriage to fall apart. Maybe it would have been possible to figure out the reasons behind Spirit's philandering and terrible self-control, and she could have stepped in to fix it before things had a chance to get so -

Kami sighed, slumping back in the driver's seat and trying to put a stop to that train of thought. She was reaching, she knew, and any thoughts that floated into her mind about what they could have done differently would do her no good. Maybe they could have gotten their relationship back on track, and maybe they could have tried harder to prevent doubts of her humanity from taking root as they had been beginning to (all things considered, it had been a good thing that she left before any of those started getting out of hand). But it was too late for any of that now, and even with all her power she was helpless to change that. Pining for the life that she had once enjoyed and would never recover was useless. It was fine for Medusa, who quite reasonably cared nothing for her family and who was under no suspicions at all, but the older witch had agreed with Kami that if she had stayed, it would only have brought trouble. Someone like her didn't belong anywhere near Death City, where she was a danger to those she held most dear. She was of much more use to everyone as she was now, traveling the world to undertake the most top-secret and dangerous missions that Shinigami-sama could throw at her.

But even so, she couldn't help missing her old life terribly, and finding ways to try and reconnect to it in spite of herself. Karasu's shadow magic allowed him to create tangible objects out of the dark substance, which she could use in place of a demon weapon and never have to take the risk of releasing her Soul Protect, and she would ask her familiar every time to make her a long black scythe with a cross-like handle. She could learn to wield a different weapon, yes, but even if she couldn't wield _her_ weapon anymore, she couldn't resist the comfort and familiarity of one that at least felt like Spirit did. As a husband, he was the worst, and she would not wish him on any other woman, but as a friend and weapon partner? He had been the best she could have asked for, and she wasn't quite strong enough to give all of that up yet.

Thinking of how she'd had to leave Spirit behind was painful enough. But to think of Maka...Well, no offense to him, but that hurt far more.

Her precious daughter...Divorcing Spirit she had fully understood and supported, but there was no way she could understand why her mother was so set on leaving Death City for good, no matter how many times she falsely assured Kami that she did. Her heart twisted to remember the barely veiled hurt and confusion in the eight-year-old's eyes the last time she'd seen her, and for one moment she had wanted to break down and confess everything about what they were and why she really had to leave.

But no. What was she supposed to have said? _Okay, so I've actually been lying to you about us being human since the day you were born. You know those creatures that literally everyone in this city and most of the rest of the world hates and wants dead? Yes, I'm really one of them, and so are you, and if I don't leave I run the risk of exposing us and getting us both hated and ostracized too. Have fun coping with that, sweetie - bye now!_ No. To dump all of that on such a young girl at an already painful time like that would only hurt her more, and Kami would not do that to her daughter. Not only would she be better off living outside of her mother's shadow, Maka would be safer if she was as blissfully ignorant of her heritage as everyone else, and if her trouble-magnet mother was far away from her. Everyone was probably better off without her around.

She listened to the rolling thunder in the distance, watched as the rain ran in thick rivulets down the windshield and turned the world outside it into a haze of wet gray, and remembered what she used to do on nights like this. Maka was thirteen now, so certainly she had outgrown her fear of storms by now. Still, she didn't think she would object to being held by her mother anyway - Death knew Kami longed for the feeling of her daughter in her arms once more. She knew better than to hope too much, but could not shake the thought that maybe one day both of them would be able to be close again, without fear or doubt. Caught up in the memory and fantasy, she started to sing softly, so as not to wake her sleeping familiar.

" _And I hope that you'll know, that nature is so; this same rain that draws you near me falls on rivers and land, and forests and sand; makes the beautiful world that you see, in the morning..."_

~0~

At times like this, Maka could hardly believe that she'd had a terror of storms as a little girl. She wasn't a little girl any longer, and she could understand why Mama had always loved them so much: now, the rumbling thunder was nothing but mildly pleasant background noise to her, the lightning that streaked the night sky was a thing of fleeting beauty, and the pattering of the rain against the apartment window was as soothing a sound as she could have asked for. It was the only sound in the apartment, empty save for her since Soul had been dragged out by an overly-excitable Black Star for "guys' night," as she reclined on the couch with a new book that she'd bought just this afternoon and was already halfway through. Wonderfully peaceful as it was, the only thing troubling Maka was the memories it inevitably dredged up, of a warm, protective embrace and a sweet voice and loving green eyes. Back then, it had been so easy to take them for granted. Now, she had no guarantee she would ever experience any of that again.

Though she didn't like to, she had to admit to herself that part of the reason she pushed herself so hard to be the best at everything was for her mother's sake. At times she would catch herself thinking that if she could only hit this next milestone - if she passed the test to become an EAT student, if she stayed at the top of the class, if she could manage to turn Soul into a Death Scythe - then maybe, just maybe, Mama would hear about it and be so proud of her daughter's accomplishment that she'd have to come back and congratulate her. But that was completely unrealistic. She knew full well that the older meister was even busier now than she had been back when she'd still lived in Death City. "Shinigami-sama has very important missions that he can only entrust to me," she'd told Maka the day she left, laying her hands on her shoulders and kneeling down to look her in the eyes as she did. "And it's my responsibility as a meister to carry them all out." No way would Mama have time to spare for her now, no matter what she did.

(And although they were few and far between, there were some times when some bitter, insecure, fearful part of her mind suggested that perhaps Mama didn't _want_ to spare a day for her anymore even if she could, that she had always intended to simply leave Death City and everyone in it behind, unwanted and forgotten, that the regular postcards were just leading her on like a carrot on a string and making her think that she still had a place in her mother's heart. But she pushed such thoughts out of her mind the instant they came. Mama wasn't that kind of person. Mama would never do that to her. Mama loved her dearly - how many times had she said so herself? She _had_ to keep believing that.)

Well, now she wasn't going to be able to concentrate on her book. Sighing, Maka marked her page, laid it down on the table, and twisted around to look out the window. It was improbable, she knew, but she wondered if it was raining wherever her mother was right now. She wondered if she thought the same things as she did whenever it stormed, or if those memories weren't quite as important to her as they were to Maka. Maybe Mama acted the same way at times like this, getting caught up in reminiscence and left with a bittersweet feeling. Maybe Mama thought of the old, familiar song too, when she felt lonely and missed her family.

" _Everything's fine in the morning..."_

Her favorite lines of the song were the last three, the ones she was almost never able to stay awake to hear her mother sing, but they sounded weak somehow in her voice. Yet another thing Mama could always do better than she could.

" _The rain'll be gone in the morning..."_

An unexpected lump in her throat made her voice catch before the last line could get out. She didn't want to sing it anyway, she thought, swallowing hard. It wasn't true anymore, and who knew if it would ever be true again?

 _But you'll still be here in the morning._

 **~0~**

 **EDIT: I almost forgot to mention, the song is "Lullaby for a Stormy Night" by Vienna Teng. VERY pretty song, definitely worth a listen.**


	3. Medusa and Minerva

**A/N - If there's anything writing this godforsaken bear of a chapter has taught me, it's that it's really obvious when I play favorites, and that I have too many Gorgon family headcanons for my own good. Just to avoid any confusion, Crona is canonically agender, but my headcanon is that they are biologically male, which is why Medusa refers to them with male pronouns while the narration uses "they, them, theirs," etc.**

 **~0~**

 _"And though I'll think of you, I guess, until the day I die_

 _I think I miss you less and less as every day goes by."_

Sweeney Todd, _Sweeney Todd_

~0~

Father had taken her sisters and Karasu away from the house for the day, leaving her and Mother alone. He had done this twice before, once for Arachne and then for Karasu, when they had reached the age for Mother to perform the spell on them. And now, on her seventh birthday, it was Medusa's turn.

"Don't worry," Karasu had told her before they left. "It's nothing to be afraid of. This is going to be good for you. You know, now that I look back on it, I don't think it hurt very much at all."

Arachne, watching them, had made a disdainful little noise. "You can drop the act, Karasu," she'd sneered. "There's no need to deceive her. You know Mother doesn't approve of dishonesty."

"I-It's not like that! I'm only trying to - !"

Ignoring their mother's young familiar and dislodging Shaula (who, not quite certain what was going on, had been clinging to her older sister's leg) from herself, Arachne walked across the room and right up to her other sister, taking the younger girl's chin in her hand. "There's no reason she shouldn't know exactly what's coming," she had said, smirking. "I wonder though, will our sweet little sister be able to take it?"

"Stop it!" Medusa had snapped, batting her sister's arm away. "If _you_ could do it, then I can too!"

"Hmph. I bet you can't," Arachne snapped back. "Of course _I_ did, but you're nowhere near as strong as I was. The spell probably won't even work on you."

"You're wrong! It'll work just like it did for you two!"

"What's going on?" Nero had cut in as he leaned into the doorway, as usual ducking down so as not to whack his head on the frame.

"Nothing, Daddy!" Arachne chirped, turning around and giving their father her best angelic smile, not noticing her sister behind her shaking her head and staring hard at him.

Nero had raised an eyebrow skeptically, making the tattoos above his eye arch too. "I know I've talked to you about teasing your little sisters before, princess. And you had better not be doing it today. Now, the three of you come on, this is your sister's day even if she doesn't want to go through with the spell right away. Medusa..." Her father had given her an encouraging smile. "Don't worry about a thing. Your mother knows what she's doing, you're going to be fine."

She had thanked her father, and bid him and her siblings goodbye. As they went out the front door, Arachne glanced back to smirk at her again, but turned away again quickly, and before Medusa could respond she was gone, having gotten in the last word without saying a thing. However, she had little time to get angry about it, as a moment later the door to the basement creaked open and her mother stepped into the room, brushing a trace of some red powder off of her black dress.

"Hello, _cara mia,"_ Minerva said fondly as her daughter darted over to meet her, and kneeled down to her level, placing her slender hands on the girl's shoulders - she noticed that the palms had pentacles drawn on them in dark red, that were most likely part of the ritualistic spell. "Are you ready?" She had fully intended to say that yes, she was completely ready, but the words caught in her throat, and Minerva frowned at her hesitation. "You know, we don't have to do this today. We don't have to do this anytime soon. Yes, I know that this is the soonest I'm able to do it with you," she cut off the beginnings of her daughter's protest. "And yes, the sooner we get this done, the better it will be, for your safety and my peace of mind. But I want to be sure you know that I absolutely will not perform the spell if you don't want me to."

She was silent for another moment, not for the first time considering whether she really wanted to go through with this now or not. It was true that it was technically not necessary to go through this right away. Seven years of age was the earliest an average witch's body could withstand the spell without permanently damaging their body, so all this day meant was that she would be able to do it, not that she had to. On the other hand, the longer the magic was in her, the stronger it would become over time. And adding to that...

The faces of their familiar and her sister came into her mind, one nervous and the other sneering. It would be painful, there was no doubt of that, but she knew that tended not to be a big deal to the older members of her family. All of Minerva and Nero's children had, at one point or another, watched one or both of their parents run confidently into a fight (never the ones to pick it or to throw the first strike, of course, they would not fail to practice what they preached to their children). And no matter what state they returned home in, neither of them ever had any fear of being wounded or worse, if enduring that meant they would succeed. It wasn't surprising that Nero hadn't been too affected by his wife's spell - being a nearly seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound half-witch and half-Immortal tended to make you just a bit more durable than most other people - but Arachne and Karasu were both far younger, smaller, and more fragile than their father was, and they had come away from it perfectly fine.

There was no reason that Medusa couldn't be like the rest of her family. She was no coward, no matter what Arachne said, and she wasn't going to be the only one afraid to take a little pain to get something important done. The idea of having this particular spell performed on her was enough to make her stomach twist and the hairs stand up on the back of her neck, but the thought of making her parents worry and inviting her older sister's scorn was even worse. Besides, Mother was right: it _was_ all for her own protection. So she looked up into Minerva's concerned eyes, trying to sound as bold and self-assured as possible, and said, "Yes, I want you to. Please, do it right now."

The corners of Minerva's lips twitched upward into a half-smile, and she leaned forward to kiss her daughter's forehead. "If that's what you want. I'm proud of you, _cara mia."_ She stood up and offered her hand. "Come on now. Before you know it, we'll be all finished and then you can decide what we do for the rest of the day."

"All right."

She took her mother's hand and let the older woman lead her through the door she'd come in by, and down into the basement. Coming down into Minerva's domain was usually very interesting for her, as it was where she and her siblings learned about non-combat magic and the history of their kind and other such things. However, she was now beginning to understand what Shaula always found so frightening about the place. The steep stairway down and the long hallway to the main rooms were lit only by small torches mounted on the stone walls, casting distorted shadows on their skin and faces. The air was much colder down here, and the loudest noise was the sound of Minerva's short-heeled boots on the floor. Maybe she'd feel better if she broke the silence.

"Mother? Is...Is it really going to hurt that badly?"

At her daughter's plaintive question, Minerva looked down at her and spoke as soothingly as possible. "You know I don't like dishonesty, so I'm not going to lie to you, Medusa. Having the spell put on you is very painful. And...I suppose that's partially my fault," she admitted, briefly glancing away. "It _is_ my spell, after all, and my magic is much stronger than that of most other witches. Having it fill you, even for the couple minutes the spell takes to complete, while it binds to your body and soul will be near overwhelming. But I believe that it will be worth it to you. When I'm done, you will always have the protection of my magic within you, whether I'm still around or not. You understand that I wouldn't do this if I didn't think it would help to keep you safe?"

"Yes, Mother."

"And that you can tell me no at any time beforehand? Once I start the spell, I will not be able to stop until it's over."

"I know. I still want you to do it today."

Minerva smiled again, but it did not escape her daughter's notice that this one looked tenser than the one before. "Very well. I promise, it will be over quickly."

"Thank you, Mother."

Over the past couple weeks, she had devoted most of her time to learning about not only this spell that her mother had created, but protection spells in general. They fell under the category of healing, a particularly uncommon and complicated branch of magic, and required above average skill, stamina, and magical power, all of which Minerva possessed. Of all the things she feared about today, the possibility that the older witch might make a mistake and screw the spell up was not one of them. She was much too good at what she did for that to happen.

She looked up at her mother: tall and imposing, radiating confidence and superiority, clad in her usual long black dress and cloak, with the smooth gold hair and sharp gold eyes that, of all her children, only Medusa had inherited. Young as she was, she knew with absolute certainty that if only she could grow up to be like this woman, she would be perfectly happy. At each witch mass, every other witch, no matter how old or strong they were, looked at Minerva Gorgon with the utmost respect and a hint of fear in their eyes, and for good reason. Her mother's shadow magic was not only rare and coveted, with its dual ability to heal and to harm, but in the hands of such a disciplined and experienced witch as Minerva, it could be absolutely devastating. Medusa had heard plenty of stories from her father and older siblings, and had personally witnessed twice, how she could utterly demolish any poor fool who had dared cross her.

The first time had been at a mass two years ago, when another witch whose name she hadn't bothered to recall had attacked Minerva, yelling about what a disgrace she was to their kind for "mating" with a half-breed, among other ugly things. The second had been just over six months ago, when she and Arachne had been found too far from the house by a witch hunter. Both times, Minerva hadn't panicked or shown any sign of fear, but had handled the situation with cold efficiency, with not so much as a change in her expression, only her eyes revealing what she really felt towards the attacker who had invoked her ire. Both fights had been ended quickly and decisively: the other witch, with neither control nor strategy, had not counted on simply blindsiding Minerva not working, and in running full speed right at her had essentially impaled herself on the spear of shadow-made-solid that Minerva had immediately summoned to her hand; and the hunter had made the mistake of assuming that he had caught the two children alone and been entirely unprepared for the waves of black flame that had overwhelmed him the minute their furious mother had caught sight of him.

Those shows of power, of unshakeable confidence in that power, had amazed her. She had known right then and there that she wanted to be just like her mother, and she had started watching Minerva much more closely when they trained together, trying to emulate her every movement. True, the prized shadow magic would never be hers to wield (that privilege belonged only to her familiar), but she could work as hard as her mother did, garner the experience that she had, in order to become the kind of person that she was. And, of course, it would be both a comfort and a help to always have that magic just beneath her skin, ready and waiting to safeguard her body and soul.

She jumped slightly when Minerva's voice jerked her out of her thoughts: "Here we are."

The door at the very end of the hall was open a crack, letting only a small stripe of light out. Minerva pushed it open and led her daughter into a small, circular room, lit by larger, stronger torches than those outside. Medusa glanced around quickly, taking in her surroundings: the room was bare, save for a couple cluttered tables pushed to the side to clear a space in the center of the smooth stone floor. There, meticulously drawn in dark red paint (the kind she recognized as being specially enchanted to dry quickly), was an intricate circular pattern, its lines interlaid with witch writing. She still wasn't very good at reading the complicated runes, but she recognized the characters for 'shield' and 'armor' and 'eternity' amid all the unfamiliar ones.

Minerva had told her exactly how the spell would go, so she knew what was expected of her now. "I have to be in the middle of it, right?" she said, forcing herself to let go of her mother's hand and step forward.

"That's right," Minerva confirmed, moving to kneel beside her as she laid down in the center of the circle, adjusting her slightly so her heart was directly above the symbol for 'life.' "Now, it won't take more than a minute. Before you know it, this will be all over."

It seemed to Medusa that her mother was trying to remind herself of those things as well as remind her, and despite the reassuring words and tone, it didn't ease her fears much. Minerva laid her hands flat on her daughter's chest, one painted palm over the other on her pounding heart, but paused a moment to look her in the eyes. "Last chance to bow out. Like I said, once I begin - "

"It won't stop until you're done. I know." She felt a little bad being so short with her mother, but she couldn't help it. "I want it over and done with. Just do it now. Please."

Minerva hesitated, looking unsure, and Medusa's breath nearly stopped right there. Was she going to decide that she wasn't strong enough to bear it now? Was she going to say no, not yet, and just prolong the torture? Surely the spell itself couldn't be as agonizing as waiting for it to start? However, her worries were unfounded: her mother's cool hands were back on her skin in a moment. "I love you very much, _cara mia,"_ she said, looking directly into her daughter's eyes. "It'll be over soon."

Medusa nodded, and squeezed her eyes shut in anticipation. But she need not have bothered. She heard her mother take a deep breath, then chant her magic phrase - " _Ravena, ravena, ven-ra-ven"_ \- and then the pain hit like a lightning bolt and her eyes flew open, stretching wide as her vision went white.

Every nerve in her body was on fire, every last cell screaming, as her insides burned and her skin felt as if it was being ripped away from her, like a flayed animal's. Reflexively, she tried to pull away from it, but she couldn't move a muscle; under the pain, she was aware of an almost-magnetic pull holding her to the floor. It was the circle, she realized, holding her still so that the spell could be completed without any problems. She knew there was a reason for it, and an important one at that, but at the moment she couldn't remember or care about it.

She couldn't see at all, couldn't hear anything but the ringing in her ears, couldn't feel anything but the agony of a thousand blades slashing through her whole body, of white-hot metal melting inside of her and searing her blood, of knowing that somewhere right beside her, her mother was there, but out of sight and far out of reach. Her thoughts were a wild and disjointed mess, garbled words among an unbroken, wordless shriek.

 _Mother mother mother it hurts it hurts make it stop it hurts make it stop mother make it stop stop_ stop -

All of a sudden, as if responding to her thoughts, the sharp pain disappeared, leaving only a dull soreness in its wake. Her vision and hearing began to return, but gradually. It took her a few moments to put together that it wasn't her own still-racing heartbeat and labored breathing she heard, but Minerva's, and that she was no longer flat on the stone floor but wrapped up safely in the arms of her mother, who was speaking to her in Greek, soft but almost too rapid and urgent for her to understand.

" _Eínai páno̱, paidí mou, af̱tó eínai ólo; eínai entáxei, lypámai, polýtimo paidí mou..."_

"...M-Mother?" she murmured, and to her surprise her voice came out hoarse and weak. Her throat ached slightly, too...Had she been screaming?

"Medusa..." Minerva lifted her head up, sweat glistening on her cheeks and forehead. Her eyes were tired, but her smile was relieved. "My daughter. Are you all right?"

"I...I think so. The spell...it's finished, then?"

"All finished," Minerva assured her. "And faster than it took me to do with your father or siblings. That didn't take too long, now, did it?"

"It _felt_ like way too long," she pointed out. "Didn't it feel that way to you?"

"It did. It was decades ago that I started to develop that spell, and ever since then I've been working at it and trying to improve it. I wanted it to have reached the point where it could not possibly be any better before I began to use it on my family. However, I could never figure out a way to make it any less painful, or any less exhausting."

"It's exhausting because you have to use a lot of magic, right? Because it's a really big, powerful spell?" She knew by now that this was how a witch's magic worked at a very basic level - the more powerful a spell, the more magic and energy a witch was required to expend to use it, which was why they had to train to build up stamina among everything else - and had experienced it as well. She and her siblings were always drained after every training session, and once or twice she had even seen her father come home on the verge of passing out from overuse of his fire magic during a particularly difficult fight. So she was more than a little surprised when Minerva's answer was entirely different than what she had expected.

"No, not because of that. At least, that's not a very important part of it. I..." Minerva's voice softened, and she glanced down at the circle on the floor. "I know it's for the best. I know that you're safer now than you would be if I hadn't placed this spell on you. But even so, a mother should _never_ cause her child pain. Doing this to Nero was difficult enough, but watching you and your siblings suffering under my hands, however briefly, and knowing that there's no way around it...It frightens me and it hurts me more than I can say," she finished, her voice a shaky, despondent whisper.

Medusa was stunned. She'd never known her mother to display such vulnerability, by admitting that she was afraid or sad or hurt. Normally, her father was the more emotionally open one, and she knew what to expect from him and what she was able to do to help when he felt these kinds of things. Uncertain what would be best to do now, she fell back on what usually comforted her other parent, and, with slight difficulty, pulled herself into a sitting position and wrapped her arms around Minerva's chest, resting her head on her shoulder. (It was much easier to hug her, she noted; her short arms didn't come close to fitting around her ridiculously brawny father and she always had to settle for one of his limbs.)

"It's all right, Mother. It doesn't even hurt anymore. And I'm protected now, aren't I?"

"You are," Minerva admitted, her voice barely a whisper at first, then steadier and more confident in her words as she continued to speak, running her fingers through her daughter's short hair as she did so. "Yes, you are. My magic is melded to you, body and soul, and it will be there long after I'm gone. That's one less thing to worry about, at least."

"So if I ever get hurt really bad, I probably won't die, right?"

"Exactly. Of course, you're not _invincible_ now, not by a long shot. It won't automatically repair most nonlethal wounds, so those will heal normally if I'm not there to heal them. But if your body is ever so badly damaged that you're in danger of dying, it will gradually regenerate itself. And if your body is destroyed beyond the possibility of quick enough regeneration, so long as you still possess your soul, you'll most likely have the time to repair yourself before it can kill you. I intend to make sure you're skilled enough to do that before you'd actually be in a situation like that." One side of her mouth jerked up into another part-smile. "With this spell holding you together, you could probably get cut clean in half and manage to survive." The smile abruptly disappeared, and she looked sternly down at her daughter. "Though I do hope you won't be putting yourself in any situation where that would actually happen."

Well, she couldn't imagine how she'd end up doing _that._ Maybe if she ran afoul of the Shinigami's scythe, but no, her father's more-or-less alliance with the powerful being would keep it far away from her as long as their family remained as untroublesome to it as they were now. So it was easy for her to smile and assure her mother that of course she wouldn't. Then something else she'd been told beforehand about the spell occurred to her. "Hey, Mother? Doesn't it leave a mark on my chest, too? Can I look at it?"

"Yes. It might be a little tender to the touch for a while, though, so be careful about that." From the pocket of her dress, Minerva withdrew a small hand mirror and handed it to her. She took it in one hand and undid the first three buttons of her shirt, looking down at the newly imprinted mark on her chest: a pentacle enclosed in a thin circle, directly over her heart. It was not much bigger than her fist, but it stood out anyway, black as charcoal against her light skin. Not the first image she would have chosen to have permanently placed on her body, but as those went, this one wasn't bad at all, and it had a practical purpose to boot.

"So that's going to stay there forever?"

"That's right. Now there's no force in the world that can keep my magic from protecting you."

"That's great." She snuggled closer to the older witch, taking comfort in the softness of her dress and the warmth of her body. "Mother, I'm glad you did the spell, even if it did hurt a lot. I want to be with you, even if it's only your magic that's with me."

"I'm glad to hear that. I feel just the same way," Minerva said, holding her daughter closer to her and reaching up to stroke her hair. "I'm so sorry it had to hurt like that, but at least you understand why I did it. It's a mother's duty, above everything else, to make sure that her child is protected."

That made sense. The undeniable sense of safety her mother's presence gave her never did fade, she reflected. "Well, I think you're good at pretty much everything, but you're _really_ good at that."

A small smile came onto Minerva's face, and her eyes seemed just a bit brighter. " _Cara mia..._ Thank you so much."

~0~

 _Three years later..._

The early summer sun was warm on her back and the light mountain breeze teased her hair as she made her way over to the nearest ledge. Of course, if watching her mother's morning training was all she were here for, she could easily find her own spot to do it from. But that was not the case, and so she made a point of flopping down as close to her older sister as possible. "Nee-san, hope you don't mind a little company?"

Arachne looked down at the younger girl in annoyance. "You know, some people like to have their space."

"What? It's not like this is your special private time with Mother or anything. You watch her every single time she comes out here, you can't let me tag along once?"

"Fine. Just be quiet, I don't want you distracting her."

She pressed her cheek against her sister's arm like a cat would, knowing that she wouldn't shove her away like usual if their mother were there to see. "Whatever you say, nee-san."

The two of them didn't say anything for a while after that, caught up in watching Minerva work her magic in the clearing below them. In her children's unanimous opinion, her shadow magic was not only the most powerful magic a witch could be born with, but the most beautiful as well. She bent the black flames completely to her will, making them swirl around her like a ribbon in a dancer's expert hands as she went through her favorite martial arts forms. When she was through with that, she moved on to practicing the shadow's second combat function: the formation of solid objects, namely, weapons. She favored, as Father called them, blade-on-a-stick weapons like the Chinese _guan dao_ and Japanese _naginata_ , but had mastered swords, knives, projectiles, and many others. (Medusa thought that when she'd gotten the hang of her own magic, maybe her mother would teach her how to wield a sword of some kind. The idea of having a whole arsenal at her command like Minerva was fascinating, but it would probably be better to start small.)

In her centuries-long life, Minerva had been around the world quite a few times and learned enough to combine several methods of fighting into her own fluid and graceful style, something that, like most other things about her, impressed and interested Medusa. Shaula might want to stay safely at home for the rest of her life, but as soon as she was old enough, she was certain that she'd be doing just the same thing that Minerva had done before committing herself to her husband and family. If she were lucky (very, _very_ lucky), maybe she could return home even stronger and smarter than her mother was. And speaking of surpassing her...

She glanced up at Arachne, whose lips were pressed into a tight line and whose eyes were narrowed as she watched Minerva. It had taken her an embarrassingly long time to put a name to the odd look in her sister's eyes. She had first mistaken it for intense concentration, then annoyance, until finally hitting upon the right word: _envy._

The realization had made her want to laugh. All her sister's haughtiness and condescending attitude never failed to come back and bite her once she was reminded that, despite what she might think and want, there was always going to be someone who outclassed her. And most likely, their mother was going to be that someone, the obstacle she can't overcome. This was all speculation on her part, seeing as neither of them had ever actually said anything on the issue that she had heard, but she had been seeing her look and act this way more and more often lately, so she thought she was guessing fairly close to the truth. She'd just have to see.

It wasn't much longer before Minerva finished, looked up to see two daughters in her audience instead of just one, and a hint of a smile appeared on her face. "I hope you enjoyed my performance," she says, and both of them nod, the younger a bit more eagerly than the elder. "If either of you want to work on your magic, we can do that later. There are some things I have to talk to your sister about, but I promise I'll still have time for you." She bent down, pressed her palm to the rock ledge's shadow, and instantly vanished into it, most likely warping directly to the house.

With nothing more to see here, Medusa was about to get up and look for something else to do, when she realized that her sister had not moved. Arachne was still staring at the place where their mother had been, with a distant look in her eyes. After a moment, in a voice almost too soft to hear, she murmured, "She's so perfect..."

 _So I_ am _right!_ Medusa thought, snickering. The sound made Arachne jump, as if she had forgotten that there was someone else nearby who could hear her. Her surprise quickly gave way to anger, and Medusa had to jump back quickly to avoid being swatted in the head. "You little - !"

" _Relax,_ nee-san," she said, smirking. "So you're jealous of Mother because you'll never be as good as her at anything no matter how hard you try. That's not so bad!"

"Oh, what do _you_ know about it? _You're_ the one who looks most like Mother. _You're_ the one whose magic is closest to hers. You're so much like her already and you don't even have to try!"

She suppressed the urge to heave a deep sigh. Her sister could be so _dramatic_ sometimes. "Hardly. You know, I could be pointing out how you've spent the most time with Mother, how you've learned the most from her, and how she thinks you're the most capable of the three of us." (She knew that the last one was only true because Arachne was the oldest, and so their parents held her to higher standards than her younger siblings, but she had to at least make it sound complimentary.)

It didn't look like Arachne was going to lash out at her again, but she was still fixing her sister with a suspicious glare. "You could. Why aren't you? You certainly never pass up an opportunity to act like a brat."

"Hey, I'm trying to be nice!"

"For once."

"I - I'll give you that. But to answer your question, I'm not getting into any of that because we've got better things to do than waste our time sniping at each other." _And I have better things to do than listen to your whining,_ Medusa thought, _but better not to be_ that _honest._

Arachne raised an eyebrow, not missing the emphasis she had put on _each other._ "What else did you have in mind for today?"

She smirked. "It's Shaula's seventh birthday tomorrow, isn't it? As her big sisters, when Mother's finished talking to her, shouldn't we be letting her know what the spell is _really_ going to be like?"

The older girl chuckled, but shook her head. "Appealing, yes, but I have to say no."

"What? Oh, come on, nee-san!" She didn't care that she was starting to sound petulant. _This is the only thing the two of us have in common!_ "I've been waiting three years to get in on that kind of fun with you!"

"No, no, I remember three years ago; Mother berated me to hell and back after Father told her I had been teasing you. I don't want to have a headache like that again, all because I was trying to have a little fun with you. Honestly, she overprotects you both. It's going to end up making you weak, and then where will you be?"

"Really." Medusa resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Despite partially agreeing with Arachne (Mother _was_ ridiculously protective of Shaula; if the little weakling wasn't going to get stronger, then all she was good for was being her sisters' physical and emotional punching bag), it was far too obvious that she wasn't saying that out of any kind of concern for her younger siblings. "I'll bet you think you could do better?"

"Maybe I could," Arachne shot back, jutting out her chin.

"Yeah, right," she said with a snicker. "Why don't you tell that to _her?"_

"...There's no point in going back and forth like this. Arguing is hardly entertaining. Do you have any other ideas?"

Medusa shrugged. "We could go look for Karasu. It takes longer for us to get bored with him than to get bored with Shaula."

"I suppose he's better than nothing," Arachne conceded, getting to her feet and starting to follow her sister into the woods where their mother's familiar liked to roam. The two of them walked together for a minute, until the older witch broke the silence, trying to mask her uncertainty with a casual tone. "Hey, Medusa...Do you think I'm like Mother?"

"No, not at all," Medusa answered flippantly, without even a glance behind her.

"H-Hey!" she cried, taken aback. "That didn't even take you a second! You're really going to write me off so quickly?"

"You asked if you're like Mother, and right now, you're not even close. I never said you _couldn't_ be...Though that's not very likely either." She turned to look her sister in the eye. "You're going back and forth on this. Do you want to be _like_ Mother or do you want to be _better_ than her? Do you love her or do you hate her? I can't tell."

From the look on Arachne's face, it seemed that she had only registered one word. "Of course I don't _hate_ her; she's our _mother!_ How ridiculous can you get?!"

Taken aback by suddenly being shouted at for what she'd thought were reasonable questions, Medusa wondered if this was part of the reason Minerva and Nero so often sighed deeply when dealing with their daughters, and then wondered why either of them bothered in the case of their obstinate eldest. "I was only _asking,_ because I really don't get you, nee-san. You say one thing and then do something completely different. I don't know what you really want from everybody."

"Hmph. I wouldn't expect an ignorant little girl like you to understand anything, anyway," Arachne retorted, crossing her arms.

 _What is_ wrong _with you?!_ she wanted to scream. _Is there really only one way we can get along without you treating me like nothing?!_ Instead, she forced herself to remain calm, to betray none of the anger making her stomach roil - following Minerva's example. "You know, you're not as great and complex a person as you think you are. And if you want to surpass Mother, you're doing a terrible job of it. Someone with her confidence and strength wouldn't be going to _ignorant little girls_ for validation."

Her sister's face went dark red, and she opened her mouth to start shouting again, but it wasn't going to do her any good; Medusa was already sprinting away, out of her sight in a minute. Though she knew that getting the last word in didn't necessarily mean she'd won the argument, she was actually fairly proud of herself for running off on that line. It sounded to her like something her mother would have said, in a decent imitation of the tone she used in cold, restrained anger.

 _Nee-san can brood and whine all she wants,_ she thought defiantly, her anger fading into self-satisfaction as her smirk returned to her face. _Because_ I'm _the one who's going to be just like Mother, and no one else!_

~0~

 _Centuries later..._

It was actually rather amusing how the silver-eyed child still insisted on acting defiant, even bruised, stripped down, and strapped tightly to an operating table, far from anyone who would be able or willing to help him. "This isn't gonna hold me, you know," he hissed, glaring up at her. "I'll get out of here, and when I do, I'll kill you, you bitch!"

Medusa smirked. Young weapons were always such brazen little things. "If you mean to make good on your threats, you'd better hurry up and do it while you still can. But if I were you, I would save your bloodlust for when you'll really need it."

"And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you'll find out just as soon as you wake up."

She pulled the straps on the boy's right wrist and elbow just a bit tighter, then reached over to the nearby IV pole and slid the needle into his arm, ignoring his shouted demand that she keep her hands off him. "There," she said, her tone falsely sweet, as she taped it into place. She reached over and ruffled his shock of wild black hair, just to anger him further, and snickered when he lunged against the restraints on his forehead, trying to bite her hand.

His resistance only lasted for a moment, and then the sedative flowing into his veins began to kick in, and his body began to weaken and his eyes to turn glassy. His voice was only a weak rasp as he tried to speak: "Wha...What'd you...?"

"Now, you just sleep here for a little while; I've got to go and get your new partner."

The weapon only managed an unintelligible gurgle in response before falling into complete unconsciousness, and Medusa turned to leave the lab. As she ascended the stairs to the upper floors and made her way down the halls of her home, she did her best to ignore the presence she felt starting to trail behind her like a shadow. This always became much more difficult when said presence started speaking to her.

"So it's not enough for you to grab the child off the street and beat him into submission? You have to toy with him too, like a cat with a mouse? I didn't think you were quite that _petty."_

The first few times it had happened, the initial realization that she was not fully alone had terrified her. But now, with complete understanding of what was happening and why as well as decades of contending with it, this was only a minor annoyance, like a mosquito incessantly buzzing in her ear. _Ignore her. You don't hear her. Ignore her._

As its creator, she knew better than anyone else how easily the black blood could induce madness. She had never once allowed it to come into contact with her body and so had never felt its full effects, but she had discovered from centuries of experimenting with it that extended exposure to it could produce a diluted version of those effects. Namely, it could cause visual and auditory hallucinations. She was careful enough with her prized creation that this didn't happen often, but every time it did, she wished that she could figure out a way to keep it from happening at all.

"Tormenting children you have no connection to is terrible enough, but I don't suppose you have any reservations about what you're about to do to your own child?"

Medusa bit her lip to keep from snapping at her. _Of course not. Who do you think you are, my conscience? Stupid woman._

There were others that she saw more frequently. Arachne, with her smug smile and mocking words; she had long since learned to control the impulse to impale her with an arrow on sight. The familiar she had once called brother, a fire-scarred nightmare, demanding to know why he had had to die. (Karasu would never be able to understand, but it had been very simple, really: he had outlived his usefulness, and back then she had never hesitated to kill, as ordered by her sister or not). Most often she saw her first lover, Nephele, with a mad light in her eyes, each scar Medusa had ever given her fresh and freely bleeding, every word of her whispered threats dripping with affection. ("I can hardly wait until the day that you die too, mistress; then we'll be together forever like we wanted. But this time, I think _I_ would like to be the one in control of _you.")_ Sometimes it was her father, appearing as only a hulking, silent mass in a corner or shadow. He was perhaps the least distracting. When it came to his precious daughters, Nero had always been all bark and no bite, and all he did was skulk in the background with a hurt, grieving expression, and occasionally ask her if everything that she had done was worth it to her.

It was easy to pretend that she neither saw nor heard her father. But it was something else entirely to try and do the same to her mother.

"You're not even going to tell him what's going to happen? It's the very least you could do, and you don't even think he deserves that?"

 _Hardly. As if I need the little coward panicking and fighting me and making things more difficult than they need to be. It's better if Crona doesn't know until after the operation is finished._

It wasn't long before she reached her child's bedroom. Crona was sprawled on their back on the unmade bed, listlessly swinging a small wooden sword back and forth in the air, and they jumped when their mother opened the door. "Medusa-sama?" they yelped in surprise, rolling over, sitting bolt upright, and dropping their toy.

"Lost track of time, did you?" she said dryly, walking over to the bed and picking Crona up. "I told you I would need you later."

"Just one, right?" the five-year-old asked nervously as she carried them out. "You said just one."

"That's right, one little experiment and then you're all done for the day," she assured him. Technically, it wasn't a lie: even after the transfusion was complete, she would have to keep Crona unconscious until she could be sure they were stable, and most likely they wouldn't wake up until tomorrow. "There's no need to be afraid," she went on. "Everything I do with you is only for your own good. Do you really think that I would do anything just to hurt you?"

"No..."

" _Yes."_

 _Go away_ , _Mother._

Crona was quiet the whole way down to the lab, resting their head against their mother's shoulder as she absently rubbed their back to keep them calm. Minerva, ignoring her daughter's thoughts, was the exact opposite. "That child loves you, you know. Loves in a way that you never can, trusts his mother unthinkingly just the way that you used to - "

 _Are you trying to change my mind, or to make me feel something? Crona is nothing like me; comparing us won't work._

"Don't interrupt me. _I_ would never have taken advantage of _you_ like this when you were young. Everything I ever did to you, I did to protect you. Everything you do to Crona, you do out of your own cruelty and apathy."

At the mention of it, she became very aware of the black pentacle still branded on her heart. Even now, hundreds of years after its placing, Minerva's magic was still there just beneath her skin, ready and able as ever to preserve the life of her daughter. By now, she had lost count of the number of times it had kept her alive over that time. Perhaps that was something she should be grateful for.

"I would never have even _thought_ of doing to you anything like what you're planning to do to him."

 _How very considerate of you. Now_ leave me alone _and let me work._

As the two of them entered the lab, Crona, unsettled by the pungent smell of disinfectant and the sight of various sharp instruments, clung closer to their mother. Upon noticing the dark-haired boy knocked out on one of the operating tables, they asked, "Who is that? What's he here for?"

"He's going to be helping us with the experiment. You can call him..." She hadn't bothered to find out the boy's real name, if he'd even had one; she had thought of a much more fitting name for him. "Ragnarok."

She had avoided looking at Minerva, but she knew her mother well enough to be fairly certain that the hallucination was rolling her eyes. "The _end of the world?_ You're so creative," she scoffed.

"What happened to his face?" Crona asked, pointing to the deep, X-shaped scar across the bridge of the boy's nose. "Is he okay?"

"He's fine." _For the moment._ "I told you there's nothing to worry about, didn't I?"

Sooner or later, Crona was going to stop believing her when she said things like that, as Minerva had pointed out to her on several prior occasions. But so long as they remained obedient to her, Medusa had countered, it didn't matter what they believed. Now, they still looked unsure about what was happening, but they neither complained nor tried to resist when she set them down on the table next to the older child's, slipped off their dress, and began attaching electrodes to their skin. "Medusa-sama? Is...Is it going to hurt?" they asked shakily.

"Not at all," she replied, turning on the heart monitor and reaching for the nearby sedative. "I'll put you to sleep now, and you won't feel a thing." She held a small gas mask up to Crona's face. "Here. Just breathe normally, in and out..."

They did as instructed, and in a few moments their eyes closed and their tiny body went limp. "Good boy," Medusa murmured, removing the mask. It didn't take her long to hook Crona up to an IV containing general anesthetic and insert their breathing tubes, and after that was done she headed into the side room to retrieve the black blood and other necessary chemicals stored there, ready for use. To her irritation, the hallucination followed her, still disapproving and still _talking._

"You should realize by now that I'm long past having any reservations about telling you exactly what I think of you now, _cara mia,_ " Minerva hissed, spitting the formerly affectionate nickname like a curse. Though Medusa tried to keep ignoring her, she could still feel her mother's cold glare on her back as she gathered her equipment, placing each item on a small cart. "You disgust me. You're nothing but a filthy liar and murderer, unworthy of being called my child. I don't know why I ever bothered trying to act as a role model to you, when from the day I died you turned around and spent the rest of your life spitting on everything I ever taught you. Did you even care when I was killed? I wouldn't be surprised if you were actually happy to be rid of me."

 _You're going to have to try a little harder than that. Such an obvious guilt trip isn't going to make me respond to you._ It was true that her parents' deaths were among the clearest of her childhood memories, and she supposed that was natural. But then again, she had been only twelve years old when it happened, and time had worn away at those memories until only a ghost of the horror and pain she had felt then remained. It was almost funny, in a way: what that had torn her world apart all those centuries ago barely meant a thing to her now.

~0~

 _She stares, shocked and wide-eyed, down from the mountain trail at what had until moments ago been a small battlefield. Now, all that's left of her parents and their assailants are the ashes and blood strewn and spattered over the stone below them, and the lingering smell of burnt hair and flesh in the air. Though beside her she can hear Shaula start to wail in Karasu's arms, though she can feel her hands shaking and her stomach turning, the reality of what's just happened hasn't quite hit her yet. It doesn't seem_ right; _her mother and father had just been down there fighting the pack of Immortals that had deemed the pair a threat, to protect the four of them, and...and then..._

 _Her mother, darting around almost too fast to see, leaving waves of shadow and screaming Immortals in her wake (the only way to be rid of them for certain, she and Nero had found, was to torch them beyond any hope of regeneration). Fast, but not quick enough to escape when the pack's alpha grabs her up and_ twists, _tearing her in half as easily as if her body were made of paper, before she's even had time to scream. He drops the pieces to the ground like trash, and she can see her mother's eyes still stretched wide, her mouth still hanging open._

 _Her father, turning just in time to see his wife die right in front of him and letting out a howl of rage and grief like his daughter had never heard before. Both his eyes and the flame tattoos on his arms and face burn sapphire, and blue fire of the same brilliant shade pours from his hands and mouth. But the half-breed is badly outnumbered, and even his magic isn't enough to get out of this fight alive and protect his fleeing children. She doesn't see any hesitation, nor any sign of what he had decided to do, before everything below her is consumed in one final, explosive blast of his fire._

 _Someone is screaming. In all the time she'll have afterward to think back on this day, she'll never be able to figure out for sure who it is._

 _And all of it because of them -_

 _At that thought, something goes tight inside her chest. This...This is all_ their _fault, no way around it! This is too much...This is..._

 _Her body is too warm and her head too light; her ears are ringing and she can't think straight anymore. The last thing she hears before the world abruptly goes gray around her is a startled shout of her name._

 _The next thing she knows, she's on a completely different angle - lying down, she realizes, on something soft - and slowly opening her eyes to see her older sister's face above her. "Awake at last. Are you all right?" she asks, uncharacteristically gently._

 _She opens her mouth to say yes, and ask what just happened to her, when the memories come rushing back in answer and she feels as if she's been punched in the gut. "M-Mother and Father...?"_

" _You didn't dream it, if that's what you were hoping."_

 _So their parents really are gone. So they really are all alone now. "Nee-san," she whispers, uncaring of how pitiful she sounds. "What...What are we going to do now?"_

 _Tense and forced as the expression is, she's startled to see Arachne smile. "Don't worry. I've had something in mind for myself for a long time, and I'll have no trouble taking you into it as well. I'll take care of all of you from now on."_

" _You will? Really?"_

" _Of course I will."_

 _When she's grown, she will hate the stupid, naïve child she had been, for believing that her sister's act of kindness comes with no strings attached. But right then, it's easy to believe, to latch on to the closest thing to a mother she has left. After all, it isn't as if she'll be given a choice any more._

~0~

None of it mattered now, Medusa reminded herself. Her mother's murder, her father's suicide, her adolescence spent helping her sister build and strengthen Arachnophobia, every bit of her past prior to her venturing out on her own to begin her own research had no bearing on her life now and not the slightest bit of importance. However, she thought, gritting her teeth, that was much harder to remember when a remnant of that past kept coming back to her and _would not shut up._

"If I had known what you would grow up to be, I would have thrown you to the wolves and saved my own life instead. I had no idea my daughter would grow up to be such a monster."

 _That's right, just keep whining to someone who doesn't care. You're so melodramatic. Surely you were never_ this _annoying when you were alive._

"After all, I always thought you would spend your life emulating me instead of your older sister."

Only nine hundred years of perfecting her self-control kept her from crushing the vial in her hand at that. _All right, you win,_ she grudgingly admitted. _I can't ignore you_ now.

Setting the vial down, she turned around to glare at the familiar figure standing behind her, who glared right back with her arms crossed and mouth pressed into a tight line. The hood of her black cloak shadowed her face, but the cold fury in her eyes was still perfectly visible. "So, I've got your attention now, do I?"

"I suppose you do," Medusa answered, forcing herself to maintain eye contact. "And where do you get off comparing me to _Arachne,_ of all people?"

Minerva smirked. "Oh, come now, don't tell me you haven't realized the similarities. You must have at some level, seeing as I'm technically your own mind spouting it back at you."

"Stop mocking me."

"I will do no such thing. You know, I think that perhaps you're actually grateful to your sister now, for raising you as her personal attack dog. She taught you all you needed to know to do the exact same thing to your own child, didn't she?"

" _Exactly_ the same thing? Hardly. I might despise her, but I enjoyed my time as her soldier. My training and my missions made me stronger than I could have ever been on my own, or with you. I can admit that, at least."

She shouldn't have been as surprised as she had been to find that Arachne had decided to form a cult of personality based around herself. Ambition and arrogance had always defined her sister, and she had been planning the formation of Arachnophobia since before the deaths of their parents, though to what degree her desire to surpass Minerva had driven her, she could never be sure. Upon those deaths, she had jumped at the chance to conscript her younger sisters and their inherited familiar into the fledgling organization.

The fact that it had been, essentially, her only option if she wanted to live wasn't a problem. Arachne was not the only Gorgon sister who lusted for power, and the stronger the cult grew, the stronger she grew as well. So she had thrown herself into her new role, spending most days going out to eliminate the people Arachne considered threats to her (and whatever else the older witch might ask of her), or training to do the same. Her parents had taught her how to survive, but her sister had taught her how to kill.

Every life that ended by her hands only proved how much stronger she was than anyone else - one of the only things her young self had cared about - and oh, what a thrill each one had brought her! She had been taught how to destroy her opponents, but no one ever had to teach her to excel at it, or to enjoy it.

"I'm not asking anything very difficult of Crona by comparison. All he needs to do is grow stronger, just like I did, and that would be perfectly simple if he'd just stop being such a coward and actually try to _._ Honestly, I don't know what he always makes such a fuss about."

Minerva narrowed her eyes. "My grandchild was born with a pure and kind heart, and you were born just the opposite. I should have tried harder to work it out of you when you were his age. I should have paid more attention to all the little signs: how you treated your little sister like she was put on this earth to be your toy, how you would ask me again and again when you would be putting your combat training to use, how you only started wanting to be like me after you saw me kill someone."

"Be like you?" she echoed derisively. "That was never going to happen. I didn't want to be like you, I only wanted your power, and when I used to tell you that it was only because I was too young to know the difference."

"And now you're actively _trying_ to corrupt your own child into a violent, sadistic killer just like _you._ It _sickens_ me."

"Feel sick all you like, it won't change anything. To tell the truth - "

" _That's_ a first."

"Shut up and let me talk. This whole situation makes _me_ sick, too, you know. I understand that there's a white sheep in every family, but why did ours have to be born to me?" Medusa said, knowing that her deliberately flippant tone would infuriate Minerva. (And maybe that was a little too petty, but she was arguing with her own hallucination; she really couldn't sink much lower than that.) "It's really very inconvenient."

Her mother's jaw clenched, and she growled through gritted teeth, "I cannot believe that you grew up to act like this. You resented your sister using you as a tool, and yet you find it perfectly acceptable to raise your child the same way. How can you do that? Is it right to you now that _you're_ the one in control, the one with all the power? You complete hypocrite."

"I much prefer it this way, yes." It wasn't exactly something she hadn't worked out for herself. She had taken Nephele - meek, vulnerable Nephele - as her initially unwilling lover all those centuries ago so that she could have someone that belonged solely to her, someone whose life she had complete control over, and over time had become aware of the implications behind her actions without the help (for lack of a better word) of any hallucination. "And I told you, I'm _not_ doing the same thing as Arachne. She did what she did out of greed and selfishness. _I_ am using Crona as a means to an end, as the catalyst that will one day make the whole world evolve. Is that really such a selfish goal?"

"...I won't try to argue that point with you, because I know I can't convince you that the purpose behind your life's work is wrong. But just answer me this: because you hated the way your sister treated you, when you'd had enough, when she wouldn't let you leave without a fight, you turned on her. You remember that proudly, don't you?"

She did. But she knew better than to smile at the memory of finally, after decades of aching to, turning her blade on her sister and getting away unscathed. "What's your point?" she snapped.

"My _point_ is, what makes you think that when Crona is older, he won't get fed up and turn on you too? It's a possibility, you know. When he gets tired of being your living weapon, when you push him one step too far...You remember how she used to punish you?"

Medusa had to bite her lip to keep herself from snarling; she could not lose her composure now, not so easily. Having spent her entire adolescence serving her sister, slipping up every now and again, and facing the consequences of such failure, had been inevitable. Really, it hadn't been at all _necessary,_ not the way she saw it: she needed no further incentive to follow Arachne's orders, and she was determined not to make nor repeat any mistakes anyway. But simple logic like that had drowned under the older witch's insecurity and obsession with controlling the sister that became, in her eyes, more of a potential threat every day, and whether she realized it or not she had always taken her discipline too far.

On principle, she didn't care to remember any of it beyond what was useful to her, much less dwell on it enough to feel anything about it. But her mother's goading her put a crack in some mental dam, and the memories came flooding in anyway as she spoke, falsely casual and pleasant.

"Holding you under that freezing cold water until you'd admit that whatever had happened that time was your fault...Kicking you out of the castle and making you sleep outside for the night...Making poor little Nephele take punishment in your place, your sister knew full well that it drove you crazy to see her suffer at anyone's hands but yours...Oh, and we can't forget the time she told Shaula to cut off your leg to see if it would grow back, but you deserved that one for what you did to her, anyway - Eh?" Minerva broke off, startled by her recitation having the exact opposite effect on her daughter than she'd intended. "Why in the world are you _laughing?!"_

"Do you...Do you really..." For a few moments, she could barely speak and her body shook with laughter. This really wasn't what she was supposed to be doing, she must sound quite unhinged, and she had to keep control of herself, Medusa reminded herself sternly. But she couldn't help it - Minerva just _didn't get it._ "Do you really think it still _hurts_ to think about what happened back then? You stupid, _stupid_ woman. You were right before, though: in a sense, I'm actually grateful to Arachne for what she did. She was as foolish as you, and did everything wrong in trying to raise a soldier who would live and die completely under her thrall. So now, I'll learn from her mistakes and do everything correctly while raising Crona, won't I?"

Minerva's lip twisted into a snarl. "You _disgusting - "_

"Thanks to you, I knew how a good mother was supposed to act, and so I was able to realize I wasn't being treated right," she spoke over her, grinning widely. "I'm all Crona has ever known, so how is he going to know he's being abused? And he's a coward and a weakling, so threats and punishment are necessary to get him to do anything, but I keep everything very simple and straightforward and never do anything over-the-top. I know everything I need to say to make him stay and do everything he's ordered to do, no matter how much it breaks his little heart to do it."

Ah, that seemed to have done the job. The hallucination's entire body was shaking in rage and revulsion. Maybe this would make her go away. "And if it turns out I miscalculated and he turns out useless to me anyway, or tries to stab me in the back? It will be very easy for me to get rid of him and find some way to start again. It wouldn't matter to m - "

 _SMACK._

She hadn't even seen Minerva lunge at her. The force of the slap snapped her head to the side and knocked her to the floor, her cheek smarting, and her cry of pain was barely out of her mouth before her mother was on top of her, wildfire in her eyes. She slammed her palm down on the younger witch's chest, right on the pentacle brand. "How _dare_ you threaten my grandchild," she snarled, in a voice that made her daughter's breath stop. "You are nothing but a monster - you don't even deserve to _live!"_

As she raised her right hand, the familiar black flames began to swirl around it, and for a moment Medusa thought she could feel their heat on her face. But that was the key word, wasn't it, she reminded herself, fighting down the terror that ran through her at the sight of them: _thought._ So instead of acting on the impulse to throw up her arm to block the blow and then to fight her enemy off, she shut her eyes tight. _It's not real, she's not here, she's not real, she's dead, she's dead she's dead she's dead she's dead -_

After a moment that seemed much longer to her, she opened her eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw only an empty room. She put her fingers to her face, then her neck, feeling no marks and no real pain there from being 'hit.' Slowly, she got to her feet, and looked down at the cart she'd loaded up. Thankfully, she hadn't knocked into it and upset its contents; that would have been frustrating.

Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, which had been delayed more than long enough, she wheeled the cart into the main room, placing it between the two operating tables. Looking at Crona, who always seemed so much smaller and more fragile when they were unconscious, lying before her, it was easy to see why if Minerva were alive now she would dote on and lay down her life to defend her grandchild. Her mother had always felt an odd urge to protect those who were too weak to take care of themselves; that was how Karasu had joined the family, after all. Arachne, on the other hand, would do just the opposite, and try to take him from her to use for her own designs. She could almost hear her mocking voice: _Like mother, like son, then?_

No. No, it wasn't going to do her any good to let herself be distracted by thoughts like that. Biological or surrogate, her mother meant nothing to her any more. None of them did.

"You are the only family that matters to me now," Medusa said softly, knowing that she would never have said such a thing out loud if Crona were able to hear it. She took a needle and vial from the cart, and began to fill the syringe. "Now, let's make you worth that."

 **~0~**


	4. Shaula and Minerva

" _A daughter without her mother is a woman broken."_

\- Kristin Hannah

~0~

 _At the time, she is still too young to understand what is happening. All she knows is that something is very,_ very _wrong._

 _Her family is talking around and above her in tight, anxious voices. The tension in the air is so heavy she can barely breathe; it feels as if there's a cinderblock in her chest. She can see_ fear _in her father's eyes, a feeling that she had been sure was impossible for someone as big and strong as him to even comprehend. Arachne and Karasu are white-faced and frantic, clutching their father's sleeves and begging him to do_ something, _but she can't follow their words enough to figure out what they want to happen and why. She turns to look at her other sister for some kind of explanation, but Medusa looks as if someone has drained all the life out of her; she stares, frozen, at the other three, dawning horror in her wide eyes._

" _Mother..." she says in a shuddering whisper, so faint that only Shaula can hear her. "Mother, where are you...?"_

 _That's right, where is their mother? She and their father, the raven and the wolf, are always strongest together, stronger than anything and anyone else in the world. Surely, they can make whatever's scaring everyone so much go away and never come back. But what is she doing when they need her here? As if in answer, a light touch on her shoulder makes her jump, and she whips around to see the woman in question standing beside her, having entered the room completely soundlessly - through her shadow, she wonders, remembering how her mother's teleportation spell works?_

 _Before either of them can say anything, Medusa notices the older witch too, cries out, "Mother!" and attracts the attention of the older three on the other side of the room._

" _Welcome back, Min," her father says gravely, over his daughter and familiar's surprised shouts. "You heard everything that's going on?"_

" _I did," she answers levelly. "I suppose we both know what has to happen now."_

 _Her father's eyes narrow, turning the shade of palest blue that they only ever see when he's truly angry or afraid, but he nods. "I suppose so."_

 _Her mother steps away from her, and the next few minutes pass in a blur. Her sisters and their familiar are all talking over each other, and the only clear words she can make out from them are Medusa shouting at both parents, "No, you have to come with us!" and Karasu begging them, "Please let me go with you!" But their parents are talking over them too, now, louder and harsher, saying they have to go, they have to fight, saying goodbyes, and she has no idea what anybody is talking about. Go where? Fight what? What is_ happening?

 _All of a sudden, her mother is close again, kneeling right up in front of her._ "Amatissima," _she croons, reaching out to lay a gentle hand on her cheek. "My baby girl…"_

 _Mother bites her lip, keeping her face carefully blank. Only her eyes betray any emotion, and the traces of fear buried in grief and guilt that her daughter can see in them terrify her even more._

" _M-Mother-"_

" _No, Shaula, listen to me. I need you to be a good girl for me and go with your sisters now, all right? Listen to them, and listen to Karasu, and stay with them no matter what. Don't give any of them a hard time, because they'll take care of you, do you understand?"_

" _Yes, but what about you? What's going on?!"_

" _Shhh, don't be afraid. You're all going to be all right, I promise. But from now on, I need you to stay safe and alive by doing what I say. You're going to grow up to be so great and so strong, I know it. I - " She stops herself, then reaches up, pulls a small silver necklace on a black cord out from the folds of her cloak and dress, and slips it around her daughter's neck. "Keep this with you, it may help you remember me better. But even if you forget everything else, never forget how much I love you."_

 _And before she can ask why she's supposed to remember, her mother is pressing a light kiss to her forehead and then turning away, moving to stand beside her father. His jaw is clenched tight and he's swallowing hard, over and over, but though it looks as if it's physically hurting him to do it, he looks directly down at his children as though committing their faces to memory, and tells them in a raw, strained voice, "Survive. That's all I will ever ask of you, and all I would ever want to see._ Survive."

 _Then the two of them tear their gazes away, turn to leave, and Arachne is taking her hand and murmuring, "Come on, it's all right," but she knows it's_ not, _everything is wrong and she doesn't want to go, not away from her parents! "Mother! Father!" she cries out, thinking wildly that this will somehow change everything back to normal, make the only two people she trusts to protect her come back and never think to leave any of them again._

 _But they don't. She helplessly watches their retreating backs, dark and unflinching, and her struggles are useless as her much bigger sisters pull her away, Arachne talking to her in tones much too distraught to be comforting and Medusa hissing at her through clenched teeth and angry tears._

"Mother!"

 _She doesn't so much as look back._

~0~

 _Forty years later..._

At first, Giriko had resented Arachne constantly dumping her two little sisters on him, unasked for and unwanted, whenever she couldn't be bothered to deal with them. But he had to admit, over the decades that he'd known them, he had grown used to the girls. Fond of them, though he would never outright admit it. They called him their big brother, even, even if he was just the guy who had initially come into their lives only to bed their older sister. Probably more than that now - sometimes he wondered if they might see him as some sort of surrogate father figure, to replace the one they had lost, the same way that Arachne sought to supplant their mother. He found that he liked that idea, somehow, almost as much as he liked the girls. They _were_ useful little things, after all...If nothing else, they'd sure learned fast how to take a good punch and throw one right back, thanks to his training.

This did not lessen his annoyance in the slightest, however, when he heard yet _another_ of their squabbles starting up nearby, destroying any chance he might have had of taking a peaceful afternoon nap.

"Nee-chan! Where did you get that?!"

"Where do you think? And why do you care? If it was _really_ important to you, you would have taken better care of it."

"I _did!_ Give it back!"

"Come and _take_ it, if you want it so much!"

 _Goddamn kids._ With a yawn and a low groan, Giriko pulled himself up off his bed and shuffled out of his room and down the hall to one of Baba Yaga Castle's spacious training rooms, the source of all the racket. When he stepped inside, a familiar sight on the sparring ring greeted him: Shaula, her face flushed with rage, glaring daggers at Medusa, who was grinning like a fox and dangling something silver on a black string from her fingers - a necklace? What would either of them want with something like that, he wondered? Especially with Arachne's tracking collars _(chokers,_ Medusa would always vehemently insist, but it was obvious what they really were) permanently stuck around their necks, it would be quite unnecessary to have.

But they weren't the ones he felt like asking. On the sidelines, neat and quiet, sat Nephele, wearing her usual weary but resigned expression. He smirked - Medusa's little love toy was always fun to tease. He leaned over the girl, dwarfing her slender form, and she flinched when he muttered in her ear, "So what fresh fuckery is going on here, sweetheart?"

Her indigo eyes narrowed, and she determinedly didn't look at him as she filled him in. "Mistress was bored, and in trying to decide how to remedy that, remembered that Shaula still had something that she perceived as belonging to her instead. I told her to forget about it, but as usual, she ignored me."

"That so?"

"Yes. She's here to rub it in that she got away with stealing it, and I'm here because you know how she likes to make me watch everything she does."

"Little petty brat," Giriko said fondly, taking a closer look at the girls on the flat stone ring. From the looks of it, the two were moments away from coming to blows. "A responsible parent would probably go out there and defuse the situation before someone gets hurt, wouldn't he?"

"I would assume so. And that means that you'll be doing the exact opposite?"

"Of course!" He smiled and leaned down, crossing his arms over an indignant Nephele's head as he settled in to watch the show.

~0~

Every muscle in Shaula's body was so tense she was shaking, and she clenched her fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms. _I was so sure I kept it all locked up...Was she ever watching, did she see me take it out? I thought I was so careful!_

The question of why this had happened never crossed her mind. She knew well by now that this was, probably, the mildest form of torment that her sister could enjoy. And she also knew that the only way she might be able to get her to do what she wanted was to try and act as if she was strong enough to force her to. That was how Arachne and Giriko brought her to heel, after all, and though she had little idea how to do what they did, it was the only option available to her.

"Nee-chan, give my necklace back _now,"_ she growled. "Or I'll come over there and make you give it back."

Medusa just laughed. "Ohhh, _scary,"_ she drawled, casually spinning the necklace cord around one finger. "My baby sister's going to come beat me up? I can't believe it."

Shaula gritted her teeth in frustration. True, she probably couldn't yet take her sister on in a fight... _But I can't lose this!_ "You don't even want it! You're just trying to make me angry, acting like a stupid spoiled kid, so stop it!"

To her surprise, Medusa actually looked to be considering her words. "You're right...I don't need this, not at all." She spun the cord around one more time, and then caught the silver bird on the end between her thumb and forefinger. She pressed down on the metal, and suggested lightly, "So how about I just break it now, hm?"

Shaula's stomach dropped. " _No!"_ she shouted, sprinting at her sister in a blind panic. But Medusa was faster than her: she swung and grabbed for the necklace, again and again, and the older girl dodged and jumped back and held it out of her reach every time.

"Aww, what's the matter, Shaula?" Medusa taunted as her increasingly desperate sister chased her around the ring. "I thought you really wanted this back! You must not really care about it at all, do you?"

Tears of anger and humiliation welled up in her eyes, that disgusted her but that she couldn't stop. " _Mother gave that to me!"_ she burst out, louder and shriller than she had intended.

Giriko felt Nephele freeze under his arms, and wondered if Medusa had told her why she had wanted that particular prize in the first place. "Mistress, isn't this enough?" she called, trying to sound indifferent and failing badly. "You've had your fun, now why don't we just go?"

"Hush, angel," Medusa dismissed her, without even looking at her. "Leave your mommy issues out of this." Trying to take advantage of her momentary distraction, Shaula made another grab at her hand, and she thrust her other hand out and blew her younger sister back with a Vector Plate under her feet, sending her tumbling across the flat stone to the opposite corner of the court. "I know what I'm doing."

It took Shaula a moment to get back to her feet, thin lines of blood trickling down her arms and legs where the stone had scraped them up. _I can't lose it,_ she thought frantically, _I can't, I can't lose her!_ "N-Nee-chan, that was _Mother's._ You should know how much it - "

"Shut up," Medusa snapped, all traces of amusement abruptly vanishing. Her eyes narrowed, turning flat and cold. "Of course I know whose it was. Why else would I have wanted it? It's not something _you_ deserve to have."

"Y-Yes, it is! Mother gave it to _me! She_ thought I deserved something of hers!"

"Why?! Why _you?_ You're not strong. You're not good for anything. You don't belong in a family like ours." She glared at the little silver bird in her hand, as if it were to blame for all this. "But I do. I'm the one who's strong like her. And I was her favorite, anyway. It should have been mine to begin with, I'm just making things right."

"You're just being _selfish!_ Why shouldn't she have given it to me instead of y - " The last word caught in Shaula's throat as the memory, the realization hit her. The last time she had seen her mother...with only one valuable possession on her to give, able to choose only one of her children to have it. " _Oh._ The day they died...She couldn't have given anything to you, could she? If she had already chosen me..."

"...I thought I told you to _shut up,"_ Medusa snarled, gripping the necklace tightly, possessively.

"A-And I thought I told _you_ to _give it back,"_ Shaula retorted, trying for the same tone but faltering.

But before either of them could do anything, a sharp bark of a laugh from the sidelines made them both jump. Recognizing it, Medusa groaned and pointedly looked away, but Shaula whirled around to see Giriko there. "You two are a riot, you know that?" he said with a grin. "Too much fun to watch!"

It wasn't strong by any means, but hope flickered in Shaula's chest. Her brother would prefer to pit the two against each other, and was rarely prone to help either of them if he didn't have to, but he was one of the only people that Medusa was willing to listen to if he decided to intervene. "A-Aniki," she started, but her sister cut her off.

"Go away, aniki, this has nothing to do with - " Medusa turned to look at him, noticed for the first time that he was using Nephele as an unwilling armrest, and immediately her face contorted in anger. " _Aniki!_ That's mine, get off!"

"Oh, really?" Giriko's grin broadened, and he wrapped his arms tightly around Nephele, ignoring the girl's yelp of pain and attempts to struggle free. "You want me to get off with your girlfriend? Didn't know you were into that."

"Get off _of_ her, you idiot!"

"I don't know, I think she - _Ow, shit!"_ he shouted, recoiling at the sudden pain lancing through his thigh, and a moment later glaring at Nephele's back as she ran to the adjacent side of the ring, dripping knife in hand. _Fuck those things and fuck the brat for teaching her to use them...Where does she even keep them in that little shift?_ he wondered, before shaking it off and returning his attention to his girls.

"All right: brat, you shut the fuck up," he said, pointing at Medusa's self-satisfied smirk as she looked from her brother to her lover and back, and then pointing at Shaula. "And runt, you _listen_ the fuck up. This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen, and considering you, that's saying a lot."

Unveiled hurt flashed across Shaula's face. "Aniki, I'm not - "

" _Yes,_ you _are._ I don't remember training you to be so weak-willed. Your whining is pathetic and you're turning out to be just as walking headache for everyone. You're a real disappointment, you know that, runt? You are the reason I drink."

At the last sentence, the speed at which Shaula's expression turned from pained to completely unimpressed nearly made him burst out laughing. "I know for a fact that that's not true. If your blood was beer, you'd slit a vein and drink yourself to death, and that's nothing to do with me."

"Heh, may be. But that's off topic. My point is, Medusa's being a little bitch about it, but _she_ has a point. This is why she's my favorite kid."

"See, Shaula, I told you!" Medusa laughed.

"Shut up, brat! Nobody's talking to you!" Giriko bellowed at the older girl, silencing her instantly, before addressing the younger again. "Look, you were trained to _fight,_ not cry and beg to get your way. That's what our prey does. Are you really going to act like the weaklings we send you out to kill?"

"I...I'm not - "

"And for fuck's sake, stop being so indecisive! Look at your sister!" he yelled, jabbing a finger in Medusa's direction. "Look at her smug little fucking smile. I want to punch it the fuck in, don't you? Come on, go and teach her a lesson!"

Medusa snickered. "Yeah, Shaula, _teach me a lesson,"_ she taunted, spinning the necklace around her finger again.

Shaula took a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the silver raven at the end of the cord. On their own, her brother's words meant nothing. But they sparked a thought that turned her resolve to steel: _Mother never begged for anything, not even her life. Mother never ran away. She fought. And I am her daughter and I can do the same._

"You have one more chance, nee-chan," she said again, glaring at her sister. Mother had been nothing if not magnanimous, after all. "Give that back."

Medusa slipped the necklace into her pants pocket, still sneering, still not taking her seriously. "Make me."

Her muscles tensed again, this time for battle. So she really had no other choice. "Aniki's right, you _are_ a brat," she muttered, and then charged at her sister.

Her siblings were strong, but she was, if not yet stronger, right on their heels, and she trained harder than any of them. She knew that one well-placed punch to the throat could shut her sister up for good, but it was a relatively small target, and if she couldn't reach Medusa's hand to grab the necklace before, then it was debatable whether she would be able to land an effective blow to her neck now. No, she thought, if she wanted to make the ideal move and end the fight before it could begin, a good kick in the gut could do it.

Medusa still stood there, letting Shaula run at her. Shaula grimaced - she had seen the older girl do this to other opponents, knew it was a sign of her complete confidence in her ability to soundly beat them. Well, it didn't matter; she would show her otherwise. She drew back her fist and kept her eyes fixed on Medusa's neck, but at the last second before throwing the punch, she ducked down low and brought her leg up, ready to ram her knee into her sister's stomach. The image of her doubled over on the ground vomiting blood while Shaula picked her pocket and ran away was too good to pass up, and she only hoped that she would be fast enough to land the hit before Medusa moved -

"Vector Plate!"

 _Shit._

An instant before the kick would have connected, her sister disappeared with a rush of air, and Shaula spun around to see her smirking from the center of the ring again. "Oh, too slow, Shaula," she lilted. "Too bad."

One day, Shaula thought, she was going to hurt herself gritting her teeth at these things. "Why don't you actually fight instead of making me chase you?!" she shouted, running at the older girl again as her mind raced trying to plan her next move.

"Excellent idea." Medusa raised a hand, and Shaula realized what she was doing just in time to leap to the side and out of the way of the arrow coming at her from behind.

A chill ran down her spine as she looked at the sharp edges, that had been barely inches away from tearing through her torso. "Are you trying to kill me?!" she cried out.

"What are you complaining about?" Medusa asked coolly, two more arrows curving up at her sides. "You asked for a fight, didn't you?"

"Yes," she muttered as she landed, her boots skidding slightly on the stone. She could feel her own magic bubbling under her skin, prodded by her anger. Then, louder: "Yes, I guess I did!"

With that, she threw her hands up, palms out. _Venenum veneno, veneno venenum!_ she chanted in her head, and heat and energy built up into a sphere in her hands. "Stinger Shooter!"

When she sent the projectile flying, she saw a fleeting look of surprise on Medusa's face, and was about to smile when her sister shouted her own command. "Vector Blade!" And a second later, the red sphere was slashed apart, and Medusa had a sleek black longsword in her hand and a new grin on her face. "It figures that that's the best you can do, Shaula."

"You fucking wish!" she shrieked, starting to bolt around the borders of the ring, another Stinger already firing up in her palm. _Nee-chan can technically fight long-range with her arrows, to a certain point,_ she thought. _But she's not good at it, and she doesn't like it, either. So I can't beat her in close combat, but maybe this way I can get the upper hand!_

And for a few minutes, it looked as if her strategy was going to work. Medusa had immediately found a weak spot in it, and was deflecting the barrage of Stingers from all around her with short, quick strokes of her sword. Arachne always said that Medusa's skill with the blade was her most valuable quality, and she was making good use of it now. But Shaula's attacks were steadily taking their toll on her: they came so fast and so hard that she was unable to move from her spot in the center, and with every block, blood dripped from her fingers and the angry red burns up and down her arms grew worse. They were at a stalemate of sorts at the moment, but sooner or later, something had to give.

 _And it's not going to be me!_ Like fueling a flame, Shaula urged her magic to rise within her, forcing herself to bring up a Stinger three times the size of her normal ones. If she could make it just big enough, it would be too strong for her sister to fend off, and though it would only give her a second where Medusa could neither attack nor defend, she was sure she could move fast enough to take advantage of it. But the second she was about to let it go, she felt the sickeningly familiar pull under her feet, and her heart jumped in panic. The Vector Plate threw her forward like an ocean wave, and for a moment all she could see was a gray blur -

Then a streak of gold and black, and fire flared up in her side and something hard slammed into the back of her head.

She was knocked to the floor, ears ringing - she only barely heard a startled Nephele cry out her name and Giriko loudly swear (in true concern or just surprise and annoyance, she couldn't tell). With shaking fingers, she reached down to the source of the pain, felt torn skin and hot flesh and warm, sticky blood running from the gash in her side. But she had barely registered what happened to her when she was kicked onto her back and was suddenly looking up the blade of her sister's sword.

"You see?" Medusa said, pressing her heel into the younger girl's stomach, making the blood from her wound spurt out faster for a moment. "I told you, you're too slow and too weak."

Now, logically, Shaula understood that the first thing that popped into her head was not at all a smart thing to say with a longsword pointed right between her eyes. But on an indignant impulse, she blurted it out anyway: "So is that why Mother preferred me over you when it really mattered?"

In a split second, Medusa's face turned from gloating to outraged, and she rammed her sword as hard as she could into the stone about half an inch from Shaula's face, making the younger girl cry out in fright and try unsuccessfully to writhe away. "You want to say that again, you little - ?!"

"Mistress, _stop it!"_ Nephele yelled, and out of the corner of her eye Shaula saw her start to move forward.

"Nephele Symponia, you set _one foot_ in this ring and you'll get ten times worse than her, I promise you," Medusa snapped, glaring hellfire at her girlfriend. With an apologetic glance at Shaula, Nephele backed away again, and Medusa turned her attention back to the girl beneath her. "Now, where were we?"

"N-Nee-chan," Shaula started to whimper. This fight had been a mistake; blood was rapidly pooling under her, and though this wound wasn't too serious she would be getting plenty more that _were_ if she didn't get out of here now. "Nee-chan, I didn't - "

"What, didn't mean to say that? No, you meant it. But I'll teach you better." The sword dissipated from her hand, and she took her foot off of her sister's stomach only to bear down and slam her knee into her ribs with everything she had, kneeling on her chest. "You've been living in your delusions for too long, I'll break you out of it," she said, barely constrained fury just under her soft voice. She stared, unblinking, into the younger girl's face. "You were a mistake. You're too weak to survive on your own. You never deserved Mother's love, and you should have died instead of her. Say it."

"Wh-What? No, I - " She tried to look away from the piercing gaze, but Medusa grabbed hold of her face, forcing Shaula to meet her eyes.

" _Say it,"_ she hissed, digging her nails deep into her sister's skin and pulling her closer, until their faces were barely inches apart.

"Agh - _all right!_ I'm weak, I'm a mistake, Mother loved you and not me! I should die! I should just die! All right?!" she shrieked, the growing lump in her throat distorting the words.

Her anger washed away by satisfaction, Medusa smiled at the tears starting to run from her sister's eyes. "Good girl. At least you can admit it," she said. She let go and stood up, letting Shaula fall to the floor with a sob as she strode away. Trembling and rubbing furiously at her face, she looked up and unwittingly met Giriko's steely-cold eyes. Her brother's lip was curled in disgust and he glared at her as if she were trash, his face saying more than any words ever could, for a moment more before turning on his heel and stalking out of the room.

"Come on, angel, now we can go," Medusa was saying as she passed by Nephele, expecting the other girl to follow obediently.

Nephele narrowed her eyes at her mistress, and then as quick as a snake's strike, she grabbed the necklace out of Medusa's pocket and threw it across the ring to the younger witch in one unbroken motion. "Shaula, catch!" she called over Medusa's yelp of indignation. "And go do something about that wound, _now!"_

Her heart leaping in relief, Shaula scrambled to her feet and jumped to catch the necklace, clasping it safely in both hands. " _Thank you!"_ she shouted over her shoulder, as she bolted out of the room as fast as her battered body would allow.

A soft smile had only half pulled itself onto Nephele's lips before a sharp yank on her long hair jerked her back into reality. "I hope that was worth it for you, little angel," Medusa hissed, twisting the lock of hair until the other girl cried out. "Because now you're going to pay for it, just like I told you."

"You only told me not to go into the ring," Nephele protested, knowing full well that it wouldn't help her in the slightest, but deciding that she had nothing to lose from pointing out the loophole. "You never said anything about what could happen outside of it."

"You _know_ what I meant!" Medusa threw back her other arm and slammed her open palm into Nephele's face so hard that the slap echoed around the empty room. Before the smaller girl could recover, she grabbed her around the throat and pulled her close, lifting her almost off her feet. "When I want the interference of someone with a _conscience,"_ she snarled, spitting the last word as if repulsed by the very idea, "I will let you know. But until then, you will do only what I tell you to do and you will stay out of my - !"

"Medusa," came the familiar, gently admonishing voice. "Drop her."

"Huh?" Medusa and Nephele both looked to the dark gem embedded in the young witch's choker - tracking wasn't all it had been placed there for. "Onee-sama, I was just - "

" _Drop her,_ I said."

Reluctantly, Medusa released her hold on Nephele, who massaged her newly bruising neck while Arachne continued to address her sister. "Giriko is right, you and Shaula are interesting to watch."

"Ah...Onee-sama, how long were you watching me, exactly?" Medusa asked tentatively, trying and failing to mask the sudden tenseness with a casual tone.

"Long enough. I have to say, I was surprised to see you pursuing that little trinket so fiercely. Is my gift to you so unsatisfactory, that you feel the need to replace it with something of our mother's?"

" _Skata,"_ Nephele swore under her breath, as Medusa rubbed nervously at the unmoving black band around her neck.

"W-Well, it was really less about me wanting to have it and much more about not wanting Shaula to have it, I'm sure you understand."

"Mm, of course. But perhaps I should be keeping a closer eye on you. How you waste your time; Shaula's not even worth bothering with. You should be focusing on your work. Come to the throne room now, I have a job for the both of you."

"Understood. I'll be there right away." Medusa glanced over at Nephele, who was giving her a sympathetic look, and narrowed her eyes. "Don't think you're off the hook. When we get home, I'm picking up right back where I left off. Now let's go," she growled, grabbing her girlfriend by the wrist and dragging her out of the room behind her.

~0~

The supply of bandages under her bed, it turned out, was lower than Shaula had expected. She would have to head down to the lab and restock soon, she thought as she wound the thick white cloth around the hastily washed gash. The injury wasn't at all deep (she'd had worse battle wounds) but it was fairly messy. As usual, Karasu wasn't around, or she would have called on the familiar and his shadow magic to heal her.

 _No, not his magic...It's not really his, it's Mother's...Mother..._

Fresh tears welled up in her eyes as the image of her mother's retreating back, the last memory she had of the older witch and one of the clearest, flashed in her mind again. She turned to the discarded, bloodstained shirt beside her and took her necklace out of the pocket, ran her fingertips gently over the little silver raven as if to assure it that she wouldn't leave it unprotected again. _This was too close...I'm sorry, Mother, I'm so sorry, I'll never lose you again, I swear._

It had been an easy thing to throw back in Medusa's face, but her assumption that their mother had chosen to give her necklace to Shaula out of favoritism was false. _Keep this with you, it may help you remember me better,_ Minerva had said when she slipped it around her neck. It had taken her some years to fully understand her mother's thought process, but she did now. She was the youngest child, would have less memories to look back on than her sisters did, and as such, was the one most in need of a physical reminder of her mother to augment them. That was all. Her mother hadn't picked favorites, and if she had, she certainly hadn't let on.

"Mother," she whispered, half to herself and half to the little bird. Her mother's animal had been a raven, true, but not as bright as this silver; her mother had always been shrouded in the black of deepest night, from her cloak to the dark fire of her magic. Always so tall and strong, to her young mind a faultless protector and paragon to live up to. Something that was not quite a smile drifted onto her face. _I'm sure you must be proud of being remembered that way, aren't you?_

"Shaula?"

The unexpected voice made her jump about a foot in the air, closing her fingers around the necklace as she whirled around to see her oldest sister standing serenely on the other side of her bed. "Oh...Onee-sama," she said, relaxing somewhat. She had long since stopped thinking things like _How the hell did you get in here?_ when this happened; the castle did belong to Arachne, she reasoned, and she had her own ways of getting around that her younger sisters were not privy to. "I'm sorry, what did you need?"

"Nothing now, dear," Arachne assured her, walking around the bed to sit at Shaula's side. "I heard about your little squabble with Medusa."

"Yes..." Shaula murmured, looking away. They were, suddenly, so close that she could feel the warmth of the older witch's body. "It's okay, I'm not hurt that bad."

"I see. Well, you'll have time to heal before your next mission. I sent Medusa away from the castle for a while, so she'll not bother you again soon." Her sister wrapped an arm around her scraped shoulders to pull her closer, gently pushing the younger girl's head to rest against her own shoulder. "You don't need to worry."

Shaula let herself lean into the embrace, closing her eyes and relaxing her breathing. Medusa never liked it when Arachne treated her this way (she tried not to show it, but how her body would go still and rigid until their sister's hands lifted from it couldn't be missed), but she couldn't fathom why. As the older witch ran her hands up and down her back, nails grazing lightly against her skin, Shaula clutched the raven tighter.

She wondered whether Medusa had caught on to the real reason that Arachne acted this way. Probably not - she did like to hold on to her idea that she was the favorite, the most valued and needed, and that would mean believing that their sister cared about her. But Shaula knew, and didn't care about either of them. Arachne wanted to think that she'd replaced their mother in her sisters' lives, becoming the authority and the object of devotion that that entailed with none of the actual maternal love behind it? Let her.

 _I'll let you...Just let me pretend,_ she thought, pressing her face into the crook of her sister's neck, willing herself to believe that the soft skin on hers and the sweet voice in her ear were those of her actual mother instead. She gripped the raven so tightly that the tips of its wings dug into her palms. _For now, please let me pretend._

And, acquiescent, her mother's voice was in her head. _But even if you forget everything else, never forget how much I love you._

 _No, never, Mother, never...There's nothing and nobody else but you. Yours is the only love I have...And I will never lose it again._

~0~

 _Centuries later..._

"Nothing and nobody else," she whispered to herself again, like a mantra, like a prayer. The little raven in her palm didn't shine as brightly as it used to, and the cord it hung from no longer held together as tightly. But that was all right. With a little of her magic, it would survive as long as she would.

She was alone in the darkness of her hideout, but it was nothing that she wasn't used to by now. Growing up in Baba Yaga Castle had taught her shame and bitterness, but with the cult long blown to hell, one sister a runaway, the other sister dead at Shinigami's hand, and a brother who wanted nothing more to do with her, the ensuing eight hundred years on her own had taught her endless, unbroken isolation. And all of it shoved carelessly onto her by others...No, it didn't matter anymore who was to blame. After centuries of pain held inside her, building like wildfire in her heart and spurring her on through every day, every kill, every experiment, the time had finally come to send it spiraling outward to anyone who happened to be in her way. Her army was ready, her Traitor venom infallible, and before nightfall Death City and every living thing within it would burn to the ground.

To her mild surprise, the thought brought up a memory, one of her earliest: her mother, still there to reassure and protect her, gently tilting her daughter's face up to look at hers. _Not even I know what will happen with time,_ she was saying, with something like a smile. _Who knows...Maybe someday you'll be stronger than both your sisters!_

"That day is today, Mother," Shaula said, eyes fixed on the raven. "I am everything you would have wanted me to be. Stronger than my sisters...And equal to you."

She brought the necklace to her lips and pressed a kiss to the warm metal, and then put it around her neck, carefully tucking it under the folds of her dress as she started to make her way out. It was almost funny, in a way - after dwelling so long on the single, final image she had of her mother, now it was her turn to go out and fight for what mattered to her most.

 _But you didn't die just to give me borrowed time. Unlike you, Mother, I will return alive and victorious. That is_ my _promise to you._

 **~0~**


End file.
